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LIFE 


W    LLIAM    PITT. 


LORD  MACAIJLAY, 


UECEDEU   BY  THE 


BOSTON: 
JGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY. 


I 


3  3  2  7 


EDITOR'S  PEEFACE. 


This  volume  of  our  biographical  series 
contains  a  Life  of  the  elder  Pitt,  by  a  writer 
in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  who  signs 
himself  J.  B e;  and  a  Life  of  the  young- 
er Pitt,  by  Lord  Macaulay.  The  former  is 
brief,  and  is  here  used  as  a  suitable  intro- 
duction to  the  latter. 

The  Pitts  cannot  be  ranked  among  heroes 
of  any  kind ;  yet  their  lives  are  pei?uliarly 
interesting,  inasmuch  as  they  arc  intimately 
connected  with  an  important  and  eventful 
period  of  English  history.  "  The  situation 
of  Pitt  [Earl  of  Chatham]  at  the  close 
of  the  reign  of  George  the  Second,"  ssija 
Macaulay,  ".was  the  most  enviable  ever  oc- 


4  Editor'* s  Preface, 

cupied  by  any  public  man  in  England.  He 
had  conciliated  the  King;  he  domineered 
over  the  House  of  Commons;  he  was  adoied 
by  the  people;  he  was  admired  by  all 
Europe.  He  was  the  first  Englishman  of 
his  time;  and  he  made  England  the  first 
country  in  the  world.  The  great  Com- 
moner— the  name  by  which  he  was  of-,en 
designated — might  look  down  with  scorn  on 
coronets  and  garters.  The  nation  was  drunk 
with  joy  and  pride.  .  .  ."  "  A  few  years  suf- 
ficed to  change  the  whole  aspect  of  affairs. 
A  nation  convulsed  by  faction,  a  throne 
assailed  by  the  fiercest  invective,  a  House 
of  Commons  hated  and  despised  by  the  '":>- 
tion,  England  set  against  Scotland,  Bri^''''n 
set  against  America,  a  rival  legislature I->^- 
ting  beyond  the  Atlantic,  English  blood 
shed  by  English  bayonets,  our  armies  capUn- 
lating,  our  conquests  wrested  from  us,  '0'^?f 
enemies  hastening  to  take  vengeance  for  past 
humiliation,  our  flag  scarcely  able  to  main- 
tain itself  in  our  own  seas — such  was  the 
spectacle  Pitt  lived  to  see." 


Editor''s  Preface,  6 

"The  aspect  of  the  world  was  changed  dur- 
ing the  long  ministry  of  the  younger  Pitt. 
The  name  itself  is  associated  with  political 
resolutions.  The  fugitive  Bourbons,  the 
downfall  of  French  aristocracy,  Jacobin 
clubs,  guillotines,  floods  of  blood  in  the 
stj?eets  of  Paris;  the  breaking  up  of  the  Ger- 
manic empire ;  the  vanishing  republic  of 
Holland ;  the  sundering  of  the  old  Helve- 
tian League  ;  the  peremptory  dissolution  of 
the  great  Council  of  Venice ;  the  founding 
of  ,a  new  republic  on  the  Western  Continent, 
where  ideas  of  political  freedom — fugitives 
from  the  Old  World  to  the  New — seemed 
t  find  an  asylum ;  fresh  creations  on  both 
s*  3S  of  the  ocean, — here  Washington,  there 
I  .  poleon, — here  democracy,  there  an  empire 
— here  States  uniting  in  representative  gov- 
ernment, there  a  confederation  of  the  Rhine; 
•^x  i-dt  parliamentary  struggles,  and  splendid 
political  victories  and  defeats ;  the  gather- 
ing of  armies  and  intrigues  of  courts; 
Franklin  and  Talleyrand ;  life-and-death 
conflicts    between   kings    and   peoples:    all 


6  Editor'' s  Preface. 

these  things,  and  many  more,  are  recalled  at 
the  bare  mention  of  the  Earl  of  Chatham 
and  his  more  illustrious  son. 

We  have  given  a  sketch  of  Lord  iSIacau- 
lay's  life,  in  another  volume  of  this  bio2:raph- 
ical  series  (Frederick  the  Great),  and  need 
not  repeat  it  here.  His  Life  of  Pitt  is  a 
fresh  production,  Avritten  expressly  for  the 
Encj^clopedia  Britannica,  and  has  been  re- 
printed from  an  early  copy.  The  article 
has  already  produced  a  sensation  in  Eng- 
land ;  many  who  are  not  subscribers  to  the 
Encyclopedia  will  doubtless  be  glad  to  ob« 
tain  it  in  a  convenient  and  attractive  form. 
O.  W  Wight, 

March.  1859. 


PITT,   EARL   OF  CIIAIHAM. 


William  Pitt,  first  Earl  of  Chatham, 
a  celebrated  British  statesman  and 
orator,  was  born  on  the  15th  of  jSTo- 
vember,  1708.  He  was  the  yonngest 
son  of  Mr.  Eobert  Pitt  of  Boconnock 
in  Cornwall,  the  grandson  of  Mr.  Tho- 
mas Pitt,  governor  of  Fort  St.  George 
in  the  East  Indies  in  the  reign  of  Qneen 
Anne,  wdio  sold  an  extraordinary  dia- 
mond to  the  King  of  France  for  £135,- 
000,  and  thns  obtained  the  name  of 
Diamond  Pitt.  Tiie  snbject  of  this 
notice  was  educated  at  Eton,  whence, 
in  January,  1726,  he  was  removed  to 
Trinity  College,  Oxford,  which  he  en- 
tered as  a  gentleman  commoner.     Here 


8         Pitts  Earl  o^  Chatham. 

the  superiority  of  his  mind  soon  attract- 
ed notice,  and  he  was  also  remarked  for 
his  powers  of  elocution;  but  at  tlie  age 
of  sixteen  he  experienced  the  first  at- 
tacks of  an  hereditary  and  incurable, 
gout,  which  continued  at  intervals  to 
torment  him  during  tlie  remainder  of 
his  life.  He  quitted  the  nniversity 
witliout  taking  a  degree,  and  visited 
France  and  Italy,  whence  he  returned 
without  having  received  much  benefit 
from  his  excursion.  His  father  was 
now  dead,  and  as  he  had  left  very 
little  to  the  younger  children,  it  became 
necessary  tluit  William  should  choose  .a 
profession.  He  decided  for  the  army, 
and  a  cornet's  corn  mission  was  pur- 
chased for  him  in  the  Blues.  But, 
small  as  his  fortune  was,  his  family  had 
the  power  and  the  inclination  to  serve 
him  At  the  general  election  of  1734:, 
bis  elder  brother  Thomas  was  chosen 
Ooth  for  Old  Saruni  and  for  Oakhamp- 


Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham,         9 

ton.  ^lien  parliament  met  in  1735, 
Thomas  made  his  election  for  Oak- 
hampton,  and  William  was  returned 
for  Old  Sariim.  At  the  time  when  lie 
obtained  a  seat  in  parliament  he  was 
not  quite  twenty-one  years  of  age. 
The  intention  of  brino^ins^  him  thus 
early  into  parliament  was  to  oppose 
Sir  Robert  Walpole,  who  had  now  been 
fourteen  years  at  the  head  of  affairs. 
In  fact,  his  abilities  soon  attracted 
notice,  and  he  spoke  with  great  vehe- 
mence against  the  Spanish  convention 
in  1738.  It  was  on  the  occasion  of  the 
bill  for  registering  seamen,  in  1740, 
which  he  opposed  as  arbitrary  and  un- 
justifiable, that  he  is  said  to  have  made 
his  celebrated  reply  to  Walpole,  who 
had  taunted  him  on  account  of  his 
youth  ;  but  the  language  of  that  reply, 
as  it  now  stands,  is  not  tlie  diction  of 
Pitt,  who  may  have  said  something 
like  what   is  ascribed  to  him,  but  of 


\ 


10      Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham, 

Dr.  Johnson,  who  tlien  reported,  or 
rather  wrote,  the  debates  for  the  Gen- 
tlemaTi's  Magazine.  In  1 Y46  Pitt  was 
apj)ointed  joint  vice-treasurer  of  Ire- 
land ;  and  in  the  same  year  treasurer 
and  paymaster-general  of  the  army, 
and  a  privy  councillors  .  The  office  of 
paymaster  he  discharged  wnth  such 
inflexible  integrity,  even  refusing  many 
of  the  ordinary  perquisites  of  office, 
that  his  bitterest  enemies  could  lay 
nothing  to  his  charge,  and  he  soon 
became  the  darling  of  the  people.  The 
old  Duchess  of  Marlborough,  who  car- 
ried to  the  grave  the  reputation  of 
being  decidedly  the  best  hater  of  her 
time,  and  who  most  cordially  detested' 
Walpole  and  his  associates,  left  Pitt  g. 
legacy  of  £10,000,  in  consideration  of 
"  the  noble  defence  he  had  made  for 
the  support  of  the  laws  of  England, 
and  to  prevent  the  ruin  of  his  country." 
In  the  year  1755,  Pitt,  deeming  it  ue- 


Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham.       11 

cessary  to  offer  a  strong  opposition  to 
tlie  continental  connections  then  formed 
by  the  ministrj^,  resigned  his  places, 
and  remained  some  time  out  of  office. 
But  his  resignation  having  alarmed  the 
people,  he  v/as,  in  December,  1756, 
called  to  till  a  higher  office,  and  ap- 
pointed secretai'j  of  state.  In  this  sit- 
uation, however,  he  was  more  success- 
ful in  obtaining  the  confidence  of  the 
public  than  in  conciliating  the  favor  of 
the  King,  some  of  whose  predilections 
he  had  conceived  himself  bound  to  op- 
pose. The  consequence  was,  that  soon 
afterwards  Pitt  was  removed  from 
office,  whilst  Legge,  with  some  others 
of  his  friends,  were  at  the  same  time 
dismissed.  But  the  nation  had  a  mind 
not  to  be  deprived  of  his  services.  The 
most  exalted  notion  had  been  formed 
of  him  throughout  the  country  ;  his 
patriotism  was  believed  to  be  as  pure 
and  disinterested   as   his  abilities  and 


12      Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham. 

eloquence  were  confessedly  transcend- 
ent ;  and  his  colleagues  shared  in  the 
same  general  favor.  In  a  word,  the 
opinion  of  the  country  was  so  strongly 
expressed,  both  directly  and  indirectly, 
that  the  King  thought  it  prudent  to 
yield ;  and  on  the  25th  of  June,  1757, 
Pitt  was  again  appointed  secretary  of 
state,  Legge  became  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer,  and  the  other  arrangements 
were  made  conformably  to  his  wishes. 
Pitt  was  now  in  effect  prime  minister  ; 
and  the  change  which  soon  took  phice 
in  the  aspect  of  public  affairs  evinced 
the  ability  of  his  measures,  and  the 
vigor  of  liis  administration.  His  spirit 
animated  tlie  whole  nation,  and  his 
activity  pervaded  every  dej^artment  of 
the  public  service.  His  plans  were 
ably  conceived  and  promptly  executed  ; 
and.  the  depression  which  had  been 
occasioned  by  want  of  energy  in  the 
cabinet,  and  ill  success  in  the  Held,  was 


Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham.       13 

followed  by  exertion,  confidence,  and 
triumph.  The  whole  fortune  of  the 
war  was  changed.  In  every  quarter 
of  the  globe  success  attended  our  arms. 
The  boldest  attempts  were  made,  both 
by  land  and  by  sea,  and  almost  every 
attempt  proved  fortunate.  In  America 
the  French  lost  Quebec ;  in  Africa 
they  were  deprived  of  their  ])rincipal 
settlements  ;\  their  power  v  as  abridged 
in  the  East/  Indies  ;  in  Ilurope  their 
armies  were  defeated ;  and,  to  render 
their  humiliation  more  complete,  their 
navy,  their  commerce,  and  their  finan- 
ces were  almost  ruined.  Amidst  this 
full  tide  of  success  George  II.  died,  on 
the  25th  of  October,  1760,  and  was 
succeeded  by  George  III.,  who  ascend- 
ed the  throne  at  a  time  when  the 
French  court  had  just  succeeded  in 
obtaining  the  co-operation  of  Spain. 

The  treaty  commonly  called  *'  family 
compact"  had  been  secretly  concluded; 


14       Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham. 

but  the  English  minister,  correctly  in- 
formed of  the  hostile  intentions  of  Spain, 
determined  to  anticipate  that  power, 
and  strike  a  blow  before  this  new  en- 
emy should  be  fully  prepared  for  action. 
He  therefore  proposed  in  the  council  an 
immediate  declaration  of  war  ao:ainst 
Spain,  urging  forcibly  that  the  present 
was  the  favorable  moment  for  hum- 
bling the  wdiole  House  of  Bourbon. 
But  when  lie  stated  this  opinion  in 
the  priv}'  council,  the  other  ministers, 
averse  to  so  bold  a  measure,  opposed 
the  proposition  of  the  premier,  alleging 
the  necessity  of  mature  deliberation  be- 
fore declaring  war  against  so  pow^erful 
a  state.  Irritated  by  the  unexpected 
opposition  of  his  colleagues,  Pitt  re- 
])lied,  "  I  will  not  give  them  leave  to 
think  ;  this  is  the  time ;  let  us  crush  the 
whole  House  of  Bourbon.  But  if  the 
members  of  this  board  are  of  a  differ- 
ent opinion,  this  is  the  last  time  I  shall 


JPitt,  Earl  of  Chatham.       15 

ever  mix  in  its  councils.  I  was  called 
into  the  ministry  by  the  voice  of  the 
people,  and  to  them  I  hold  myself  an- 
swerable for  my  condnct.  I  am  to 
thank  the  ministers  of  the  late  king  for 
their  snpport ;  I  have  served  my  coun- 
try with  success  ;  but  I  will  not  be  re- 
sponsible for  the  conduct  of  the  war 
any  longer  than  while  I  have  the  direc- 
tion of  it."  To  this  declaration  the 
president  of  the  council  answered,  ''  I 
lind  the  gentleman  is  determined  to 
leave  us ;  nor  can  I  say  that  I  am  sorry 
for  it,  since  he  w^ould  otherwise  have 
certainly  compelled  us  to  leave  him. 
But  if  he  is  resolved  to  assume  the 
right  of  advising  his  Majestj^,  and  di- 
recting the  operations  of  the  war,  to 
what  purpose  are  we  called  to  this 
council  ?  When  he  talks  of  being  re- 
sponsible to  the  people,  he  talks  the 
language  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  forgets  that  at  this  board  he  is  re- 


16      Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham, 

sponsible  only  to  the  King.  However, 
though  he  may  possibly  have  convinced 
himself  of  his  infallibility,  still  it  re- 
mains that  we  should  be  equally  con- 
vinced before  we  can  resign  our  under- 
standings to  his  direction,  or  join  with 
him  in  the  measure  he  proposes."  The 
opposition  he  thus  encountered  the  na- 
tion attributed  to  the  growing  influence 
of  Lord  Bute.  But  however  this  may 
have  been,  Pitt  was  a  man  of  too  high, 
not  to  say  imperious  a  temper,  to  re- 
main as  the  nominal  head  of  a  cabinet 
which  he  was  no  longer  able  to  direct. 
Accordingly,  on  the  5th  of  October, 
1761,  he  resigned  all  his  appointments ; 
and,  as  some  reward  for  his  services,  his 
wife  was  created  Baroness  Chatham 
in  her  own  right,  wdiilst  a  pension  of 
£3000  a  year  was  settled  on  the  lives  of' 
himself,  his  lady,  and  his  eldest  son. 

No  fallen  minister,  if  fallen  he  could 
be  called,  ever  carried  with  him  more 


Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham.       V^ 

completely  the  confidence  and  regret  of 
the  nation,  whose  afiiiirs  he  had  so  suc- 
cessfully administered.  But  at  this 
time  the  King  was  also  popular  ;  and 
the  war  being  continued  b}^  liis  new 
ministers  with  vigor  and  success,  no 
discontent  appeared  until  after  the  con- 
clusion of  the  peace.  The  impulse 
given  by  Pitt  had  carried  them  forward 
in  the  same  direction  which  he  had 
pursued  ;  but  they  w^ere  equally  inca 
pable  of  profiting  by  the  advantages 
which  had  been  already  gained,  or  of 
prosecuting  the  war  until  the  objects 
for  which  it  was  originally  undertaken 
should  be  accomplished.  The  victories 
gained  over  France  and  Spain  having 
greatly  elated  the  nation,  the  feeling 
which  almost  nniversally  prevailed 
amongst  the  people  was,  that  we  should 
either  dictate  peace  as  conquerors,  or 
continue  the  war  until  our  adveisaries 
were  more  eflfectually  humbled.     This 


18       Fitt,  Earl  of  Chatham, 

was  likewise  Pitt's  opinion.  Accord- 
ingly, wlien  the  preliminaries  of  peace 
came  to  be  discussed  in  parliament,  he 
went  down  to  the  Ilou'se  of  Commons, 
though  suffering  severely  from  an  at- 
tack of  gout,  and  spoke  for  nearly  three 
hours  in  the  debate,  giving  his  opinion 
on  each  article  of  the  treaty  in  succes- 
sion, and,  upon  the  whole,  maintaining 
that  it  was  inadequate  to  the  conquests 
of  our  arms,  and  the  just  expectations 
of  the  country.  Peace  was,  however, 
concluded  on  the  10th  of  February, 
1763,  and  Pitt  continued  unemployed. 
After  his  resignation  in  1761,  Pitt 
conducted  himself  in  a  manner  worthy 
of  his  high  character.  So  far  from 
giving  a  vexatious  and  undiscriminat- 
ing  opposition  to  the  ministry  which 
had  succeeded  his  own,  he  maintained 
his  popularity  in  dignified  retirement, 
and  came  forward  only  when  questions 
v>f  great   importance  were  to  be    dis- 


J^itt^  Earl  of  Chatham.       19 

cussed.  One  of  these  occurred  in  1764, 
on  the  subject  of  general  warrants,  the 
illegality  of  which  he  denounced  with 
all  the  energy  and  vigor  of  his  elo- 
quence. Another  occasion,  when  he 
came  forward  in  all  his  strength,  was 
the  consideration  of  the  discontents 
which  had  arisen  on  account  of  the 
•£tamp  Act.  In  March  1TG6,  the  re- 
peal of  that  act  having  been  proposed 
by  the  Rockingluim  ministry,  Pitt, 
though  not  connected  with  them,  ably 
supported  the  measure,  which  was  car- 
ried,  but  wliether  prudently  or  the  con- 
trary is  still  a  matter  of  dispute.  About 
this  time  Pitt  had  devised  to  him  by  will 
a  considerable  estate  in  Somersetshire, 
the  property  of  Sir  William  P3nisent  of 
Burton-Pynsent  in  that  county,  who, 
from  admiration  of  his  public  character, 
disinherited  his  own  relations,  in  order 
to  bequeath  to  him  the  bulk  of  his  for- 
tune.     After    the   dissolution   of    the 


20      Fitt,  Earl  of  Chatham. 

Rocklngliam  ministry,  a  new  adminis- 
tration was  formed,  and  in  1766  Pitt 
was  appointed  lgi:44^njj:  seal.  At  the 
same  time  lie  was  created  a  peer  by  the 
titles  of  Viscount  Pitt  of  Burton-Pyn- 
sent,  in  the  county  of  Somerset,  and 
Earl  of  Chatham,  in  the  county  of 
Kent. 

TVhatever  mlMit  be  his  motives  in 
accepting  a  peerage,  it  is  certain  that 
it  proved  very  prejudicial  to  his  char- 
acter, and  that  in  consequence  he  sank 
as  much  in  popularity  as  he  rose  in 
nominal  dignity.  The  "great  com- 
moner," as  he  was  sometimes  called, 
had  formed  a  rank  for  himself,  on  the 
basis  of  his  talents  and  exertions,  which 
titular  honors  might  obscure,  but  could 
not  illustrate ;  and,  with  the  example 
of  Pultenes^  before  him,  he  should  have 
been  careful  to  preserve  it  untarnished 
by  empty  distinctions,  shared  by  the 
uiean  and  the  worthless  as  well  as  by 


Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham.      21 

the  great,  the  gifted,  and  the  good. 
Lord  Chatham,  however,  did  not  long 
continue  in  office  after  being  elevated 
to  the  peerage.  On  the  2d  of  Novem- 
ber, 1768,  he  resigned  the  place  of  lord 
privy  seal,  and  never  afterwards  held 
any  public  employment;  nor  does  he 
appear  to  have  been  at  all  desirous  of 
returning  to  office.  He  was  now  sixty, 
and  tlie  gout,  by  wliich  he  had  so  long 
been  afflicted,  disabled  him,  by  its  fre- 
quent and  violent  attacks,  for  close  and 
regular  application  to  business.  In 
the  intervals  of  his  disorder,  however, 
he  failed  not  to  exert  himself  upon 
questions  of  great  magnitude ;  and  in 
1775,  1776,  and  1777,  he  most  strenu- 
ously opposed  the  measures  pursued  by 
the  ministers  in  the  contest  with  Amer- 
ica. Hi&  last  appearance  in  the  House 
of  Lords  was  on  the  2d  of  April,  1778. 
He  was  then  very  ill,  and  much  de- 
"'>ilitated  ;  but  the  question  was  irapor- 


22       Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham. 

taut,  being  a  motion  of  the  Duke  of 
Richmond  to  address  his  Majesty  to  re- 
move the  ministers,  and  to  make  peace 
with  America  on  any  terms.  His  lord- 
ship made  a  long  speech,  in  which  he 
summoned  up  all  his  remaining  strength 
to  pour  out  his  disapprobation  of  a 
measure  so  inglorious.  But  the  effort 
overcame  him,  for  in  attempting  to  rise 
a  second  time,  he  fell  down  in  a  con- 
vulsive fit ;  and  though  he  recovered 
for  the  time,  his  disorder  continued  to 
increase  until  the  11th  of  May,  when 
he  expired  at  his  seat  at  Hayes.  His 
death  was  lamented  as  a  national  loss. 
As  soon  as  the  news  reached  the  House 
of  Commons,  which  was  then  sitting, 
Colonel  Barre  made  a  motion,  that  an 
address  should  be  presented  to  his 
Majesty,  requesting  tliat  the  Earl  of 
Chatham  should  be  buried  at  the  pub- 
lic expense.  But  Mr.  Rigby  having 
proposed  the  erection  of  a  statue  to  his 


Fitt^  Earl  of  Chatham,      23 

memory,  as  more  likely  to  perpetuate 
the  sense  of  his  great  merits  entertained 
by  the  public,  this  was  unanimously 
agreed  to.  A  bill  was  soon  afterwards 
passed,  by  which  £iOOO  a  year  was 
settled  upon  John,  now  Earl  of  Chat- 
ham, and  the  heirs  of  the  late  earl  to 
whom  that  title  might  descend.  His 
lordship  was  married  in  1754  to  Lady 
Hester,  sister  of  Earl  Temple,  by  whom 
he  had  three  sons  and  two  daugh- 
ters. 

The  principal  outlines  of  Pitt's  char- 
acter have  been  variously  sketched, 
sometimes  with,  and  sometimes  with- 
out, any  depth  of  shadow.  The  truth 
is,  that  there  scarcely  ever  Jived  a  per- 
son who  had  less  claim  to  be  painted  al- 
togetlier  en  heaa^  or  who  so  little  merited 
unsparing  censure.  Lord  Macaulay 
says,  "  That  he  was  a  great  man,  cannot 
"or  a  moment  be  doubted ;  but  his  was 
not  a  complete  and  well-proportioned 


24       Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham, 

greatness.  The  public  life  of  Hampden 
or  of  Somers  resembles  a  regular  drama, 
wliicli  can  be  criticised  as  a  whole,  and 
every  scene  of  which  is  to  be  viewed 
in  connection  with  the  main  action. 
The  public  life  of  Pitt,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  a  rude  though  striking  piece, 
abounding  in  incongruities,  and  with- 
out any  unity  of  plan,  but  redeemed  by 
some  noble  passages,  the  effect  of  which 
is  increased  by  the  tarn  en  ess  or  extrava- 
gance of  what  precedes  and  of  what 
follows.  His  opinions  were  unfixed; 
and  his  conduct,  at  some  of  the  most 
important  conjunctures  of  his  life,  was 
evidently  determined  by  pride  and  re- 
Bentment.  He  had  one  fault,  which  of 
all  human  faults  is  most  rarely  found  in 
company  with  true  greatness.  He  was 
extremely  affected.  He  was  an  almost 
(Solitary  instance  of  a  man  of  real  ge 
nius,  and  of  a  brave,  lofty,  and  com- 
inunding  spirit,  without  simplicity  of 


JPiti,  Earl  of  Chatham.       25 

character.  He  was  an  actor  in  the 
closet,  an  actor  in  the  council,  and  an 
actor  in  parliament;  and  even  in  pri- 
vate society  he  conld  not  lay  aside  his 
theatrical  tones  and  attitudes.  We 
know  that  one  of  the  most  distin<yuished 
of  his  partisans  often  complained  that 
he  could  never  obtain  admittance  to 
Lord  Cliatham's  room  till  qwhyj  thing 
was  ready  for  tlie  representation  ;  till 
the  light  was  thrown  with  Rembrandt- 
like  effect  on  the  head  of  the  illustrious 
performer ;  till  the  flannels  had  been 
arrano:ed  with  the  air  of  Grecian  dra- 
pery,  and  the  crutch  placed  as  grace- 
fully as  that  of  Belisarius  or  Lear." 
Yet,  Avith  all  his  faults  and  affectations, 
he  possessed,  in  a  very  extraordinary 
degree,  many  of  the  elements  of  true 
greatness.  lie  had  splendid  talents, 
strong  passions,  quick  sensibility,  and 
rehement  enthusiasm  for  the  grand  and 
the  beautiful.     There   was   something 


26       Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham. 

about  liim  which  ennobled  even  ter- 
giversation itself.  He  often  went 
wrong,  very  fur  wrong ;  but,  amidst 
the  abasement  of  error,  he  still  re 
tained  what  he  had  received  from  na 
ture,  "an  intense  and  glowing  mind." 
In  an  age  of  low  and  despicable  pros- 
titution, the  age  of  Dodington  and 
Sandys,  it  was  something  to  have  a 
man  who  might  perhaps,  under  some 
strong  excitement,  have  been  tempted 
to  ruin  his  country,  but  who  never 
would  have  stooped  to  pilfer  from  her ; 
a  man  whose  errors  arose,  not  from  a 
sordid  desire  of  gain,  but  from  a  tierce 
thirst  for  power,  glory,  and  vengeance. 
/  "History  owes  him  this  attestation, 
that,  at  a  time  when  any  thing  short  of 
direct  embezzlement  of  the  public 
money  was  considered  as  quite  fair  in 
public  men,  he  showed  the  most  scru 
pulous  disinterestedness;  that,  at  a 
time  when  it  seemed  to  be  generally 


Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham,       27 

taken  for  granted  that  government 
could  be  nplield  only  by  the  basest  and 
most  immoral  arts,  he  a})pealed  to  the 
better  and  nobler  parts  of  human  na- 
ture ;  that  he  made  a  brave  and  splen- 
did attempt  to  do,  by  means  of  public 
opinion,  what  no  other  statesman  of  his 
day  thought  it  possible  to  do  except  by 
means  of  corruption  ;  that  he  looked 
for  snpport,  aot,  like  the  Pelhams,  to  a 
strong  aristocratical  connection,  not, 
like  Bute,  to  the  personal  favor  of  the 
sovereign,  bnt  to  the  middle  class  of 
Englishmen ;  that  he  inspired  that 
class  with  a  firm  confidence  in  his  in- 
tegrity and  ability ;  that,  backed  by 
them,  he  forced  an  unwilling  court  and 
m  unwilling  oligarchy  to  admit  him  to 
in  ample  share  of  power ;  and  that  he 
'[ised  his'  power  in  such  a  manner  as 
clearly  proved  that  he  had  sought  it, 
not  for  the  sake  of  profit  or  patronage, 
out  from  a  wish  to  establish  for  himself 


28       Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham. 

a  groat  and  durable  reputation,  by 
means  of  eminent  services  rendered  to 
the  state." 

A  great  many  unmeaning  phrases 
have  been  employed,  and  much  rheto- 
rical exaggeration  has  been  expended, 
in  attempts  to  characterize  Lord  Chat- 
ham's st^'le  of  eloquence.  The  fob 
lowing  estimate  by  Lord  Macaulay, 
from  whom  we  have  borrowed  some  of 
the  foregoing  observations,  is  at  once 
deep,  discriminating,  and  brilliant. 

"  1\\  our  time  the  audience  of  a  mem- 
ber of  parliament  is  the  nation.  The 
three  or  four  hundred  persons  who  may 
be  present  when  a  speech  is  delivered 
may  be  pleased  or  disgusted  by  the 
voice  and  action  of  the  orator ;  but  in 
the  reports  which  are  read  the  next 
day  by  hundreds  of  thousands,  the  dif- 
ference between  the  noblest  and  the 
meanest  figure,  between  the  ricliest  and 
tha  shrillest  tones,  between  the  most 


Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham.       29 

graceful  and  the  most  niiconth  gesture, 
altogether  vanishes.  A  hundred  years 
ago,  scarcely  any  report  of  wliat  passed 
witliin  the  walls  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons was  suffered  to  get  abroad.  In 
those  times,  therefore,  the  impression 
which  a  s^^eaker  might  make  on  the 
persons  who  actually  heard  him  was 
every  thing.  The  impression  out  of 
doors  was  hardly  worth  a  thought.  In 
the  parliaments  of  that  time,  therefore, 
as  in  the  ancient  commonwealths,  those 
qualifications  which  enhance  the  im- 
mediate efforts  of  a  speech,  were  far 
more  important  ingredients  in  the  com- 
position of  an  orator  than  they  would 
appear  to  be  in  our  time.  All  those 
qualifications  Pitt  possessed  in  the 
highest  degree.  On  the  stage,  he  would 
have  been  the  finest  Brutus  or  Corio- 
lanus  ever  seen.  Those  who  saw  him 
in  his  decay,  when  his  health  was 
broken,  when  his  mind  was  jangled, 


30      Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham, 

when  lie  had  been  removed  from  that 
Btormyassembly  of  which  he  thoroughly 
knew  the  temper,  and  over  which  he 
possessed  unbounded  influence,  to  a 
small,  a  torpid,  and  an  unfriendly  au- 
dience, say  that  his  speaking  was  then 
for  the  most  part  a  low  monotonous 
muttering,  audible  only  to  those  who 
sat  close  to  him  ;  that,  when  violently 
excited,  he  sometimes  raised  his  voice 
for  a  few  minutes,  but  that  it  soon  sank 
again  into  an  unintelligible  murnmr. 
Such  was  the  Earl  of  Chatham  ;  but 
such  was  not  William  Pitt.  His  figure, 
when  he  first  appeared  in  parliament, 
was  strikingly  graceful  and  command- 
ing, his  features  high  and  noble,  his 
eye  full  of  fire.  Ills  voice,  even  when 
it  sank  to  a  whisper,  was  heard  to  the 
remotest  benches ;  when  he  strained  it 
to  its  full  extent,  the  sound  rose  like 
the  swell  of  the  organ  of  a  great  cathe- 
dral, shook  the  house  with  its  peal,  and 


spc 
ni 


cul 


Pitt    Earl  of  Chatham,       31 

was  lieard  throu2:li  lobbies  and  down 
staircases,  to  the  Court  of  Heqiiests  and 
the  precincts  of  Westminster  Halh  He 
cultivated  all  these  eminent  adv^antages 
with  the  most  assiduous  care.  His  ac- 
tion is  described,  by  a  very  malignant 
observer,  as  equal  to  that  of  Garrick. 
His  play  of  countenance  was  wonder- 
ful;  he  frequently  disconcerted  a  hos- 
tile orator  by  a  single  glance  of  indig- 
nation or  scorn.  Every  tone,  from  the 
impassioned  cry  to  the  thrilling  aside, 
was  perfectly  at  his  command.  It  is 
by  no  means  improbable  that' the  pains 
which  he  took  to  improve  his  great 
personal  advantages,  had  in  some 
respects  a  prejudicial  operation,  and 
tended  to  nourish  in  him.  that  passion 
for  theatrical  effect  which  was  one  of 
'e  most  conspicuous  blemishes  iu  his 
aracter. 

*'But  it  was  not  solely  or  principallj 
butward  accomplishments  that  Pitt 


3'J      Pitt,  Earl  of  GhatJiam. 

owed  the  vast  influence  which,  during 
nearly  thirty  years,  he  exercised  over 
the  House  of  Commons.  He  was  un- 
doubtedly a  great  orator  ;  and  from  the 
descriptions  of  his  contemporaries,  and 
the  fragments  of  his  speeches  which 
still  remain,  it  is  not  difficult  to  discover 
the  nature  and  extent  of  his  oratorical 
powers. 

"  He  was  no  speaker  of  set  speeches. 
His  few  prepared  discourses  were  com- 
plete failures.  The  elaborate  panegyric 
which  he  pronounced  on  General  Wolfe 
was  considered  as  the  very  worst  of  all 
his  performances.  *  No  man,'  says  a 
critic  who  had  often  heard  him,  *ever 
knew  so  little  what  he  was  going  to 
say.'  Indeed,  his  facility  amounted 
to  a  vice ;  he  was  not  the  master,  but 
the  slave  of  his  own  speech.  So '  Vj^ 
self-command  had  he  when  once  '  ^^ 
the  impulse,  that  he  did  not  like  ®  ^g, 
part  in  a  debate  when  his  m'        ^^ 


Fitt,  Earl  of  Chatham,       33 

full  of  iin  important  secret  of  state.  '  I 
nmst  sit  still,'  he  once  said  to  Lord 
Slielbiirne  on  such  an  occasion,  '  for 
when  once  I  am  np,  everything  that  is 
in  my  mind  comes  out.' 

"  Yet  he  was  not  a  great  debater. 
That  ho  should  not  have  been  so  when 
he  first  entered  tlie  House  of  Commons, 
is  not  strange ;  scarcely  any  person 
has  ever  become  so  without  long  prac- 
tice and  many  failures.  It  was  by  slow 
degrees,  as  Burke  said,  that  Mr.  Fox 
became  the  most  brilliant  and  powerful 
debater  that  parliament  ever  saw.  Mr. 
Fox  himself  attributed  his  own  success 
t-k  the  resolution  which  he  formed  when 
'  \oung,  of  speaking,  well  or  ill,  at 
i«i'ast  once  every  night.  '  During  five 
whole  sessions,'  he  used  to  say,  '  I 
spoke  every  night  but  one  ;  and  I  re- 
gret only,  that  I  did  not  speak  that 
niglit  too.'  Indeed,  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  name  any  great  debater  who  has 


34      Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham, 

not  made  liimself  a  master  of  his  art  at 
the  expense  of  his  audience. 

"  But  as  this  art  is  one  which  even  the 
ablest  men  have  seldom  acquired  with- 
out long  practice,  so  it  is  one  which 
men  of  respectable  abilities,  with  as- 
eiduous  and  intrepid  practice,  seldom 
fail  to  acquire.  It  is  singular  that,  in 
such  an  art,  Pitt,  a  man  of  splendid 
talents,  great  fluency,  and  dauntless 
boldness,  whose  whole  life  was  passed 
in  parliamentary  conflicts,  and  wlir 
during  several  years  was  the  leadiD;^, 
minister  of  the  Crown  in  the  House  o\ 
Commons,  should  never  have  attainc' 
to  high  excellence.  He  spoke  withou 
premeditation  ;  but  his  speech  foTlbwc' 
tjie  course  oHiis  own  thougiitg,"ancl  r?.5> 
that  of  the  previous  discussT^  He 
could,  indeed,  treasure  up  in  Ins  ii.> 
mory  some  detached  expression  of  a 
hostile  orator,  and  make  it  ^'' o  text  for 
sparkling  ridicule  or  burning  invective. 


JPittj  Earl  of  Chatham.       35 

Some  of  the  most  celebrated  burets  of 
bis  eloquence  were  called  fortli  by  an 
unguarded  word,  a  laugh,  or  a  cheer. 
But  this  was  the  only  sort  of  reply  in 
which  he  appears  to  have  excelled.  He^^/^ 
was  perhaps  the  only  great  English 
orator  who  did  not  think  it  an  advan- 
tage to  have  the  last  word,  and  who 
generally  spoke  by  choice  before  his 
most  formidable  opponents.  His  merit  * — ^ 
was  almost  entirely  rhetorical.  He  did 
not  succeed  either  in  exposition  or  re- 
futation; but  his  speeches  abounded 
with  lively  illustrations,  striking  apo- 
thegms, well-told  anecdotes,  happy 
allusions,  passionate  appeals.  His  in- 
vectiye_arjd  sarcasm^WfiTe.  tremendous. 
Perhaps  no  English  orator  was  ever  so 
much  feared. 

"  But  that  which  gave  most  effect  to 
his  declamation  was  the  air  of  sincerity, 
of  vehement  feeling,  or  moral  elevation, 
vhich  belonged  to  all  that  he  said.  His 


I 


86      Pitty  JEarl  ow   Chatham, 

Btyle  was  not  always  in  the  purest 
taste.  Several  contemporary  judges 
pronounced  it  too  florid.  Walpole,  in 
the  midst  of  the  rapturous  eulogy  which 
he  pronounces  on  one  of  Pitt's  greatest 
orations,  owns  that  some  of  the  meta- 
phors w^ere  too  forced.  The  quotations 
and  classical  stories  of  the  orator  are 
sometimes  too  trite  for  a  clever  school- 
boy. Bat  these  were  niceties  for  wliicli 
the  audience  cared  little.  The  enthu- 
siasm of  the  orator  infected  all  who 
were  near  him  ;  his  ardor  and  his  noble 
bearing  put  fire  into  the  most  frigid 
conceit,  and  gave  dignity  to  the  most 
puerile  allusion." 

Such  is  the  character  of  this  great 
statesman  and  orator,  as  drawn  by  one 
masterly  hand.  It  may  perhaps  both 
instruct  and  interest  our  readers  if  we 
present  another,  delineated  by  an  artist 
equally  distinguished  for  the  vigor, 
judgment,  and  fidelity  with  which  he 


Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham.      37 

paints  sncli  grand  pieces  for  the  gallery 
of  history.  The  preceding,  as  we  have 
ah'eady  said,  is  from  the  pen  of  Lord 
Hacanlay  ;  the  following  is  understood 
to  be  from  that  of  Lord  Brongham  : 

"  The  first  place  among  the  great 
qualities  which  distinguished  Lord 
Chatham  is  unquestionably  due  to  firm- 
ness of  purpose,  resolute  determination 
in  the  pursuit  of  his  objects.  This  was 
the  characteristic  of  the  younger  Bru- 
tus, as  he  said,  who  had  spared  his  life 
to  fall  by  his  hand — Quicqidd  vult^  id 
valde  vidt  /  and  although  extremely 
apt  to  be  sliown  in  excess,  it  must  be 
admitted  to  be  the  foundation  of  all 
true  greatness  of  character.  Every 
thing,  however,  depends  upon  the  en- 
dowments in  whose  company  it  is 
found  ;  and  in  Lord  Chatham  these  were 
of  a  very  high  order.  The  quickness 
Tith  which  he  could  ascertain  his  ob- 
ject, and   discover  his  road  to  it,  was 


\iS      Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham. 

fully  commensurate  with  his  persever- 
ance and  his  boldness  in  pursuing  it  ; 
the  firmness  of  grasp  with  which  he 
held  his  advantage  was  fully  equalled 
by  the  rapidity  of  the  glance  with 
w^hich  he  discovered  it.  Add  to  this 
a  mind  eminently  fertile  in  resources, 
a  courage  which  nothing  could  daunt 
in  the  choice  of  his  means,  a  resolution 
equally  indomitable  in  their  applica- 
tion, a  genius,  in  short,  original  and  dar- 
ing, which  bounded  over  the  petty  ob- 
stacles raised  by  ordinary  men — their 
squeamishness,  and  their  precedents, 
and  their  forms,  and  their  regularities 
— and  forced  away  its  path  through  the 
entanglements  of  this  base  undergrowth 
to  the  worthy  object  ever  in  his  view, 
the  prosperity  and  the  renown  of  his 
country.  Far  superior  to  the  paltry 
objects  of  a  grovelling  ambition,  and 
regardless  alike  of  party  and  of  per- 
coual  considerations,  he  constantly  set 


Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham,       39 

before^  his_ej^_l]^  of  a 

public  man,  to  further  the  interests  of' 
his  species.  In  pursuing  his  course 
towards  that  goal,  he  disregarded  alike 
the  frowns  of  power  and  the  gales  of 
popular  applause  ;  exposed  himself  un- 
daunted to  the  vengeance  of  the  court, 
while  he  battled  against  its  corrup- 
tions, and  confronted,  unabashed,  the 
rudest  shocks  of  public  indignation, 
while  he  resisted  the  dictates  of  perni- 
cious agitators ;  and  could  conscien- 
tiously exclaim,  with  an  illustrious 
statesman  of  antiquity,  'Ego  hoc  ani- 
mo  semper  fui  ut  invidiam  virtute  par- 
tam,  gloriam  non  invidium  putarem.' 

"  Nothing  could  be  more  ,e^augled 
than  the  foreign  policy  of  this  country  at 
the  time  when  he  took  the  su])reme  di- 
rection of  her  affairs  ;  nothing  could  be 
more  disastrous  than  the  aspect  of  her 
Fortunes  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe. 
Wita  a  single  ahy  in  Europe,  the  King 


40      Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham. 

of  Prussia,  and  him  beset  by  a  combi- 
Dation  of  all  the  continental  powers  in 
unnatural  union  to  effect  his  destruc- 
tion ;  with  an  army  of  insignificant 
amount,  and  commanded  by  men  only 
desirous  of  grasping  at  the  emoluments, 
without  doing  the  duties  or  incurring 
the  risks  of  their  profession  :  with  a 
uavy  that  could  hardly  keep  the  sea, 
and  whose  chiefs  vied  with  their  com- 
rades on  shore  in  earning  the  character 
given  them  by  the  new  minister,  of  be- 
ing utterly  unfit  to  be  trusted  in  any 
enterprise  accompanied  with  *  the  least 
appearance  of  danger  ;'  with  a  gener- 
ally prevailing  dislike  of  both  services, 
which  at  once  repressed  all  desire  of  join- 
ins:  either,  and  damped  all  public  spirit 
in  the  country, by  extinguishing  all  hope 
of  success,  and  even  all  love  of  glory ; 
it  was  hardly  possible  for  a  nation  to  be 
placed  in  circumstances  more  inauspi- 
cious to   military   exertions ;  and  yet 


Pitt,  Earl  of  Ch    r /, a  >>.       4\ 

war  raged  in  every  qiiartc  ■•  of  the  wold 
where  our  dominion  extended,  while  the 
territories  of  our  onlj  aily,  as  well  as 
those  of  our  own  sovereign  i]i  Geruin-nv, 
were  invaded  by  France,  and  her  forces 
by  sea  and  land  menaced  our  shores. 
In  the  distant  possessions  of  the  Crown 
the  same  want  of  enterprise  and  of  spirit 
prevailed.  Armies  in  the  West  were 
paralyzed  by  the  inaction  of  a  captain 
who  would  hardly  take  the  pains  to 
write  a  despatch  recording  the  nonen- 
tity of  his  operations  ;  and  in  the  East, 
while  frightful  disasters  were  brought 
upon  our  settlements  by  barbarian 
powers,  the  only  military  capacity  that 
appeared  in  their  defence  was  the  acci- 
dental display  of  genius  and  valor  by 
a  merchant's  clerk,  who  thus  raised 
laimself  to  celebrity  (Mr.,  afterwards 
Lord,  Clive).  In  this  forlo^-n  state  of 
affairs,  rendering  it  as  impossible  to 
•.hink  of  peace  as  it  seemed  hopeless  to 


42       Fitt,  Earl  of  Chatham. 

continue  the  jet  inevitable  war,  the 
base  and  sordid  views  of  politicians 
kept  pace  with  the  mean  spirit  of  the 
military  caste ;  and  parties  were  spli 
or  united,  not  upon  any  difference  oi 
agreement  of  public  principle,  but  up- 
on mere  questions  of  patronage  and 
share  in  the  public  spoil,  while  all 
seemed  alike  actuated  by  one  only  pas- 
sion, the  thirst  alternately  of  power 
and  of  gain. 

"  As  soon  as  Mr.  Pitt  took  the  helm, 
the  steadiness  of  the  hand  thctt  held  it 
came  to  be  felt  in  every  motion  of  the 
vessel.  There  was  no  more  of  waver- 
ing councils,  of  torpid  inaction,  of  list- 
less expectancy,  of  abject  despondency. 
His  firmness  gave  confidence,  his  sj)irit 
roused  courage,  his  vigilance  secured 
exertion,  in  every  department  under  his 
sway.  Each  man,  from  the  first  lord 
of  the  Admiralty  down  to  the  most 
humble  clerk  in  the  victualling  office 


Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham.       43 

— each  soldier,  from  the  commander- 
in-chief  to  the  most  obscure  contractor 
or  commissary — now  felt  assured  that 
he  was  acting  or  indolent  under  the 
eye  of  one  who  knew  his  duties  and 
his  means  as  well  as  his  own,  and  who 
would  very  certainly  make  all  default- 
ers, whether  through  misfeasance  or 
through  nonfeasance,  accountable  for 
whatever  detriment  the  commonwealth 
might  sustain  at  their  hands.  Over 
his  immediate  coadjutors  his  influence 
swiftly  obtained  an  ascendent  which  it 
ever  after  retained  uninterrupted.     Up- 

/^on  his  first  proposition  for  changing 
the  conduct  of  the  war  he  stood  single 
among  his  colleagues,  and  tendered  his 
resignation  should  they  persist  in  their 
"iissent;  they  at  once  succumbed,  and 
from  that  hour  ceased  to  have  an  opin- 
on  of  their  own  upon  any  branch  of 

—  t^e  public  affairs.  Nay,  so  absolutely 
was  he  determined  to  have  the  control 


\ 


44      Fitt^  Earl  of  Chatham, 

of  those  measiii'es  of  wIlIcIi  he  knew 
the  responsibility  rested  upon  him 
alone,  that  he  insisted  upon  the  first 
lord  of  the  Admiralty  not  having  the 
correspondence  of  his  own  department; 
and  no  less  eminent  a  naval  character 
than  Lord  Anson,  with  his  junior  lords, 
were  obliged  to  sign  the  orders  issued 
by  Mr.  Pitt  while  the  writing  was  cov- 
ered over  from  their  eyes. 

"The  efi'ects  of  this  change  in  the 
whole  management  of  the  public  busi- 
ness, and  in  all  the  plans  of  the  govern- 
ment, as  well  as  in  their  execution, 
were  speedily  made  manifest  to  all  the 
world.  The  German  troops  were  sent 
home,  and  a  well-regulated  militia 
being  established  to  defend  the  coun- 
try, a  large  disposable  force  was  distrib- 
uted over  the  various  points  whence 
the  enemy  might  be  annoyed.  France, 
attacked  on  some  points,  and  menaced 
on  others,  was  compelled  to  retire  from 


Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham,      45 

Germany,  soon  afterwards  suffered  the 
most  disastrous  defeats,  and,  instead  of 
threatening  England  and  her  allies 
with  invasion,  liad  to  defend  herself 
against  attack,  suffering  severely  in 
several  of  her  most  important  naval 
stations.  JSTo  less  than  sixteen  islands, 
and  settlements,  and  fortresses  of  im- 
portance, were  taken  from  her  in 
America,  and  Asia,  and  Africa,  include 
ing  all  her  West  Indian  colonies  ex- 
cept St.  Domingo,  and  all  lier  settle- 
ments in  \\\Q  East.  The  whole  impor- 
tant province  of  Canada  was  likewise 
conquered,  and  the  Havana  was  ta- 
ken from  Spain.  Besides  this,  theseas 
were  swept  clear  of  the  fleets  that  had 
50  lately  been  insulting  all  our  colo- 
nies, and  even  ail  our  coasts.  Many 
general  actions  were  fought  and  gain- 
ed ;  one  among  them  the  most  decisive 
that  had  ever  been  fought  by  our  navy. 
Thirty-six  sail  of  the  line  were  taken 


16      Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham. 

or  destroy  eel,  fifty  frigates,  forty -five 
sloops  of  war.  So  brilliant  a  course 
of  uninterrupted  success  had  never 
in  modern  times  attended  the  arms  of  j 
any  nation  carrying  on  war  with  other  ? 
states  equal  to  it  in  civilization,  and 
nearly  a  match  in  power.  But  it  is  a 
more  glorious  feature  in  the  ^unex- 
ampled administration  which  history 
has  to  record,  when  it  adds,  that  all 
public  distress  had  disappeared ;  all 
discontent  in  any  quarter,  both  of  the 
colonies  and  parent  state,  had  ceased ; 
that  no  oppression  was  anywhere  prac- 
.tised,  no  abuse  sufi'ered  to  prevail  ^ 
\thatno  encroachments  were  made  upon 
ithe  rights  of  the  subject,  no  malversa- 
jtions  tolerated  in  the  possessors  of 
^^power  ;  and  that  England,  for  the  first 
itiine  and  for  the  last  time,  presented 
T  the  astonishing  picture  of  a  nation  sup- 
\  porting  without  murmur  a  widel}^  ex-  / 
\    tended  and  costly  war,  and  a  people 


Pitty  Earl  of  Chatham,      4Y 

hitherto  torn  with  conflicting  parties  so 
united  in  the  service  of  the  common- 
wealth, that  the  voice  of  faction  had 
ceased  in  the  land,  and  any  discordant 
_whisper  was  heard  no  more.  '  These,' 
said  the  son  of  his  first  and  most 
formidable  adversary,  Walpole,  when 
informing  his  correspondent  abroad 
that  the  session,  as  usual,  had  ended 
without  any  kind  of  opposition,  or  even 
of  debate, — '  these  are  the  doings  of 
Mr.  Pitt,  and  they  are  wondrous  in  our 
eyes.' 

"To  genius  irregularity  is  incident, 
and  the  greatest  genius  is  often  marked 
by  eccentricity,  as  if  it  disdained  to 
move  in  the  vulgar  orbit.  Hence  he 
who  is  fitted  by  his  nature,  and  trained 
by  his  habits,  to  be  an  accomplished 
*  pilot  in  extremity,'  and  wliose  incli 
nations  carry  him  forth  to  seek  the  deep 
when  tlie  waves  run  high,  may  be 
found,  if  not    '  to   steer   too  near  th^ 


48      Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham. 

shore,'  yet  to  despise  the  sunken  rocks 
which  they  that  can  only  be  trusted  in 
cahii  weather  would  have  more  surely 
avoided.  To  this  rule  it  cannot  be 
said  that  Lord  Chatham  afforded  any 
exception  ;  and,  although  a  plot  had 
certainly  been  formed  to  eject  him 
from  the  ministry,  leaving  the  chief 
control  of  affairs  in  the  feeble  hands 
of  Lord  Bute,  whose  onlj^  support  was 
court  favor,  and  whose  only  talent  lay 
in  an  expertness  at  intrigue,  yet  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  this  scheme 
was  only  rendered  practicable  by  the 
hostility  which  the  great  minister's 
unbending  habits,  his  contempt  of  or- 
dinary men,  and  his  neglect  of  every- 
day matters,  had  raised  against  him 
among  all  the  creatures  both  of  Down- 
ing Street  and  St.  James's.  In  fact  his 
colleagues,  who  necessarily  felt  hum- 
bled by  his  superiority,  were  needlessly 
mortified  by  the  constant  display  of  it ; 


Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham,      49 

and  it  would  have  betokened  a  still 
higher  reach  of  understanding,  as  well 
as  a  purer  fabric  of  patriotism,  if  he 
whose  great  capacity  threw  those  sub- 
ordinates into  the  shade,  and  before 
whose  vigor  in  action  they  were  suffi- 
ciently willing  to  yield,  had  united  a 
little  suavity  in  his  demeanor  with  his 
extraordinary  powers,  nor_  iriade  At. 
al \^ays  necessary  for  them  to^^acknowl - 
edge.,^s_w^  as  to  feel  their  hiferi ority. 
It  is  certain  that  the  insulting  arrange- 
ment of  the  Admiralty  to  which  refer- 
ence has  been  alread}^  made,  while  it 
lowered  that  department  in  the  public 
opinion,  rendered  all  connected  with 
him  his  personal  enemies  ;  and,  indeed, 
though  there  have  since  his  days  been 
prime  ministers  whom  he  would  never 
have  suffered  to  sit  even  as  puny  lords 
at  his  boards,  yet  were  one  like  himself 
again  to  govern  the  country,  the  Admi- 
ralty chief,  who  might  be  far  inferior 


50      I^itt,  Earl  of  Chatham, 

to  Lord  Anson,  would  never  submit  to 
the  humiliation  inflicted  upon  that  gal- 
lant and  skilful  captain.  Mr.  Pitt's 
policy  seemed  formed  upon  the  assump- 
tion that  either  each  public  function- 
ary was  equal  to  himself  in  boldness, 
activity,  and  resource,  or  that  he  was 
to  preside  over  and  animate  each  de- 
partment in  person  ;  and  his  confidence 
was  such  in  his  own  powers  that  he 
reversed  the  maxim  of  governing, 
never  to  force  your  way  where  you  can 
win  it,  and  always  disdained  to  insinu- 
ate where  he  could  dash  in,  or  to  per- 
suade where  he  could  command.  It 
thus  happened  that  his  colleagues  were 
but  nominally  coadjutors,  and  though 
they  durst  not  thwart  him,  yet  rendered 
no  heart-service  to  aid  his  schemes. 
Indeed,  it  has  clearly  appeared  since 
his  time  that  they  were  chiefly  induced 
to  yield  him  implicit  obedience,  and 
\eave   the  undivided   direction   of  al| 


Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham,      51 

Dperations  in  his  hands,  \)j  the  expec- 
tation that  the  faihire  of  what  they 
were  wont  to  sneer  at  as  'Mr.  Pitt's 
visions,'  would  turn  the  tide  of  public 
opinion  against  him,  and  prepare  his 
downfall  from  a  height  of  which  they 
felt  that  there  was  no  one  but  himself 
able  to  dispossess  him." 

Tlie  same  powerful  writer,  having 
thus  sketched  the  character  of  the 
statesman,  proceeds  next  to  delineate 
that  of  the  orator,  as  far  as  this  can  now 
be  done  from  the  extremely  scanty  and 
imperfect  materials  which  have  been 
preserved.  The  fame  of  Lord  Chat- 
ham's eloquence  is,  in  truth,  almost 
wholly  traditional. 

"There  is,  indeed,  hardly  any  elo- 
quence,  of  ancient  or  of  modern  times, 
of  which  so  little  that  can  be  relied  on 
as  authentic  has  been  preserved  ;  unless 
uerhaps  tliat  of  Pericles,  Julius  Caesar, 
and  Lord  Bolingbroke.     Of  the  actions 


52      JPitt,  Earl  of  ChatJiahi. 

of  tlie  two  first  we  have  sufficient  re- 
cords, as  we  have  of  Lord  Chatham's ; 
of  their  speeches  we  have  little  that 
can  be  regarded  as  genuine  ;  although, 
bj  unquestionable  tradition,  we  know 
that  each  of  them  was  second  only  to 
the  greatest  orator  of  their  respective 
countries ;  while  of  Bolingbroke  we 
only  know,  from  Dean  Swift,  that  he 
was  the  most  accomplished  speaker  of 
his  time ;  and  it  is  related  of  Mr.  Pitt 
(the  younger),  that  when  the  conversa- 
tion rolled  upon  lost  works,  and  some 
said  they  should  prefer  restoring  the 
books  of  Livj^,  some  of  Tacitus,  and 
some  a  Latin  tragedy,  he  at  once  de- 
cided for  a  speech  of  Bolingbroke. 
What  we  know  of  his  own  father's  ora- 
tory is  much  more  to  be  gleaned  from 
contemporary  panegyrics,  and  accounts 
of  its  effects,  than  from  the  scanty,  and 
for  the  most  part  doubtful,  remains 
which  have  reached  us. 


I*itt^  Earl  of  Chatham.      63 

'*A11  accounts,  however,  concur  in 
representing  those  eifects  to  have  been 
prodigious.  The  spirit  and  vehemence 
which  animated  its  greater  passages, 
their  perfect  application  to  the  subject- 
matter  of  debate,  the  appositeness  of 
his  invective  to  the  individual  assailed, 
the  boldne-ss  of  the  feats  which  he  ven- 
tured upon,  the  grandeur  of  the  ideas 
w^iich  he  unfolded,  the  heart-stirring 
nature  of  his  appeals,  are  all  confessed 
by  the  united  testimony  of  all  his  con- 
temporaries ;  and  the  fragments  which 
remain  bear  out  to  a  considerable  extent 
such  representations  ;  nor  are  we  likely 
to  be  misled  by  those  fragments,  for 
the  more  striking  portions  were  cer- 
tainly the  ones  least  likely  to  be  either 
forgotten  or  fabricated.  To  these 
mighty  attractions  was  added  the  im- 
posing, the  animating,  the  commanding 
power  of  a  countenance  singularly  ex- 
pressive ;  an  eye  so  piercing  that  hardly 


54       Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham. 

any  one  could  stand  its  glare ;  and  a 
manner  altogether  singularly  striking, 
original,  and  characteristic,  notwith- 
standing a  peculiarly  defective  and 
even  awkward  action.  Latterly,  indeed, 
his  infirmities  precluded  all  action; 
and  he  is  described  as  standing  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  leaning  upon  his  crutch, 
and  speaking  for  ten  minutes  together 
in  an  under-tone  of  voice  scarcely  audi- 
ble, but  raising  his  notes  to  their  full 
pitch  when  he  broke  out  into  one  of 
liis  grand  bursts  of  invective  or  excla- 
mation. But  in  his  earlier  time,  his 
wliole  manner  is  represented  as  having 
been  beyond  conception  animated  and 
imposing.  Indeed,  the  things  which 
he  effected  by  it  principally,  or  at  least 
which  nothing  but  a  most  striking  and 
commanding  tone  could  have  made  it 
possible  to  attempt,  almost  exceed 
-i)elief.  Some  of  these  sallies  are  in- 
deed examples  of  that  approach  made 


Fitt,  Earl  of  Chatham,       55 

to  the  ludicrous  by  the  sublime,  which 
has  been  charged  upon  him  as  a  pre- 
vailing fault,  and  represented  under 
the  name  of  charlatanerie^ — a  favorite 
plirase  with  his  adversaries,  as  it  in 
later  times  has  been  with  the  ignorant 
undervaluers  of  Lord  Erskine.  'It  is 
related  that  once  in  the  House  of 
Commons  he  began  a  speech  with 
the  words,  '  Sugar,  Mr.  Speaker,' — and 
then,  observing  a  smile  to  prevail  in 
the  audience,  he  paused,  looking  fiercely 
around,  and  with  a  loud  voice,  rising 
in  its  notes,  and  swelling  into  vehement 
anger,  he  is  said  to  have  pronounced 
again  the  word  ^  Sugar  !  '  three  times, 
— and  having  thus  quelled  tlie  house, 
and  extinguished  every  appearance  of 
levity  or  laughter,  turned  round,  and 
disdainfully  asked,  '  Who  will  laugh 
at  sugar  now  ? '  We  have  this  anecdote 
on  good  traditional  authority  ;  that  it 
was  believed   by  those  who   had   tlio 


56       Pitty  Earl  of  Chatham. 

best  means  of  knowing  Lord  Chatham, 
is  certain  ;  and  this  of  itself  shows  their 
sense  of  the  extraordinary  powers  of  his 
manner,  and  the  reach  of  his  audacity 
in  trusting  to  those  powers. 
I        "  There   can   be  no    doubt  that  of 
I    reasoning, — of  sustained  and  close  ar- 
I    gument, — his  speeches  had  but  little.    . 
His  statements  were  desultory  though 
striking,  perhaps  not  very  distinct,  cer- 
I     tainly  not  all  detailed,  and  as  certainly   I 

ever}''  way  inferior  to  those  of  his  cele- 
L^rated  sou.     If  he  did  not  reason  co- 
I    ]    g^ently,  he  assuredly  did  not  compress 
his  matter  vigorously.      He  was    any 
thing  rather  than  a  concise  or  a  short 
speaker ;   not  that  his  great  passages 
were  at  all  diffuse,  or  in  the  least  de- 
gree loaded  with  superfluous  words ; 
^Jtuit^he  was  prolix  in  the  w^hole  texture 
I    of  his  discourse,  and  he  was   certainly 
I  the  first  who  introduced  into  our  senate 
the  practice,  adopted  in  the  American 


Pitt^  Earl  of  Ghatham,      51 

war  by  Mr.  Burke,  and  continued  by 
otliers,  of  long  speeches, — speeches  of 
two  and  three  hours,  by  which  oratory 
has  gained  little  and  business  less.  His 
discourse  was,  however,  fully  informed 
with  matter — liis  allusions  to  analogous 
subjects,  and  his  reference  to  the  history 
of  past  events,  were  frequent — his  ex- 
pression of  his  own  opinions  was  copious 
and  free,  and  stood  very  generally  in 
the  place  of  any  elaborate  reasoning  in 
their  support.  A  noble  statement  of 
enlarged  views,  a  generous  avowal  of 
dignitied  sentiments,  a  manly  and 
somewhat  severe  contempt  for  all  petty 
or  mean  views,  whetlier  their  baseness 
proceeded  from  narrow  understanding 
or  from  corrupt  bias,  always  pervaded 
nis  whole  discourse  ;  and,  more  than 
Hny  other  orator  since  Demosthenes,  he 
wasjii^fergttTSJ^  by  the  nobleness  of 
fpfib'no^^mjj]  whiVh  hfi  Tf'^^ilXlhJ;  and 
^Jiimnplitude  of  survey  wliich  he  cast 


58      Pitt^  Earl  of  GhatJiam, 

upon,  the  subject-matters  of  debate, 
\^illis  invective  was  unsparing  and  liard 
ko  be  endured,  although  he  was  a  less 
'eminent  master  of  sarcasm  than  his  son, 
and  rather  overwhelmed  his  antagonist 
with  the  burst  of  words  and  vehement 
indignation,  than  wounded  him  by  the 
edge  of  ridicule,  or  tortured  him  with 
the  gall  of  bitter  scorn,  or  fixed  his 
arrow  in  the  wound  by  the  barb  of 
epigram.  These  things  seemed  as  it 
were  to  betoken  too  much  labor  and 
too  much  art;  more  labor  than  was 
consistent  with  absolute  scorn,  more 
art  than  could  stand  with  heartfelt  rage, 
or  entire  contempt  inspired  by  the  oc- 
casion, at  the  moment  and  on  the  spot. 
But  his  great  passages, — those  by  which 
he  has  come  down  to  us,  those  which 
gave  his  eloquence  its  peculiar  charac- 
ter, and  to  which  its  dazzling  success 
was  owing, — were  as  sudden  and  unex- 
pected as  they  were   natural.     Every 


Pitt^  Earl  of  Chatham,       59 

one  was  taken  by  surprise  when  they 
rolled  forth ;  every  one  felt  them  to  be 
BO  natural  that  he  could  hardly  under 
stand  wh}^  he  had  not  thought  of  them /^^^ 
himself,  although  into  no  one's  imagi- 
nation had  they  ever  entered*  If  the 
quality  of  being  natural  without  being 
obvious  is  a  pretty  correct  description 
of  felicitous  expression,  or  what  is  called 
fine  writing,  it  is  a  yet  more  accurate 
representation  of  fine  passages  or  feli- 
citous hits  in  speaking.  In  these  all 
popular  assemblies  take  boundless  de- 
light ;  by  these,  above  all  others,  are 
the  minds  of  an  audience  at  pleasure 
moved  or  controlled.  They  form  the 
grand  charm  of  Lord  Chatham's  ora- 
tory; they  were  the  distinguishing  ex- 
cellence of  his  great  predecessor,  and 
gave  him  at  will  to  wield  the  fierce 
democracy  of  Athens,  and  to  fulmine 
over  Greece." 

Many  years  ago,  a  small  volume  was 


60      Fitt^  Earl  of  Chatham, 

published  by  Lord  Grenville,  contain- 
ing letters  written  by  the  Earl  of  Chat- 
ham to  his  nephew  Thomas  Pitt,  Lord 
Camelford.  They  are  replete  with  ex 
cellent  advice,  conveyed  in  an  easy, 
affectionate,  and  not  inelegant  style, 
having  all  of  them  been  penned  evi- 
dently without  effort,  under  the  simple 
impulse  of  the  kindl}'^  feelings  and 
anxious  interest  which  they  manifest 
throughout.  At  the  same  time,  they 
might  have  been  written  by  a  person 
vastly  inferior  to  Lord  Chatham  ;  and 
indeed  one  can  scarcely  avoid  surprise 
at  the  absence  of  every  trace  of  that 
genius,  power,  and  originality  for  which 
the  writer  was  so  greatly  distinguished. 
Almon,  the  bookseller,  has  written 
Anecdotes  of  the  Life  of  the  Earl  of 
Chatham^  3  vols.  8vo.  ;  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Thackeray  has  illustrated  the  subject 
more  accurately,  as  well  as  fully,  in  hig 
History  of  the  Earl  of  Chatham^  2  vols. 


JPitt^  Earl  of  Chatham.       61 

4:to.  None  of  his  own  writings  have 
been  given  to  the  workl,  except  a  small 
volume  of  letters  to  the  son  of  his  elder 
brother,  afterwards  Lord  Camelford, 
published  some  years  ago  by  Lord 
Grenville ;  and  his  Correspondence,  in 
4  vols.  8vo.,  1838-40.  The  Gorrespond- 
ence  illustrates  very  fully  his  life  and 
character,  and  furnishes  valuable  ma- 
terials for  the  political  history  of  his 
time.  His  wife,  who  died  in  1803,  bore 
him  three  sons  and  two  daughters. 
The  second  son,  the  subject  of  the  next 
article,  gained  a  political  fame  capa- 
ble of  rivalling  that  of  his  illustrious 
father. 


WILLIAM  PITT. 


William  Pitt,  the  second  son  of  Wil- 
liam Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham,  and  of 
Lady  Hester  Grenville,  daughter  of 
Hester,  Countess  Temple,  was  born  on 
the  28th  of  May,  1759.  The  child  in- 
herited a  name  which,  at  the  time  of 
his  birtli,  was  the  most  illustrious  in 
the  civilized  Avorld,  and  was  pronounced 
by  every  Englisliman  with  pride,  and  by 
every  enemy  of  England  with  mingled 
admiration  and  terror.  During  the 
first  year  of  his  life,  every  month  had 
its  illuminations  and  bonfires,  and  every 
wind  broii2:ht  some  messeno^er  charged 
with  joyful  tidings  and  hostile  stand- 


64  William  Pitt. 

ards.  In  Westphalia  the  English  in- 
fantry won  a  great  battle  which  arrest- 
ed the  armies  of  Louis  the  Fifteenth 
in  the  midst  of  a  career  of  conquest: 
Boscawen  defeated  one  French  fleet  on 
the  coast  of  Portugal :  Ilawke  put  to 
flight  another  in  the  Bay  of  Biscay  : 
Johnson  took  Niagara :  Amherst  took 
Ticonderoga :  Wolfe  died  by  the  most 
enviable  of  deaths  under  the  walls  of 
Quebec :  Clive  destroyed  a  Dutch  ar- 
mament in  the  Iloogley,  and  establish- 
ed tiie  Eiiglisli  supremacy  in  Bengal : 
Coote  routed  Lally  at  Wandewash,  and 
established  the  English  supremacy  in 
the  Carnatic.  The  nation,  wliile  loud-  ^ 
ly  applauding  the  successful  warriors, 
considered  them  all,  on  sea  and  on  land, 
in  Europe,  in  America,  and  in  Asia, 
merely  as  instruments  whicli  received" 
their  direction  from  one  superior  mind. 
It  was  the  great  William  Pitt,  the  great 
commoner,  who  had  vanquished  French 


William  Pitt.  65 

marshals  in  Germariy,  and  French  ad- 
mirals on  the  Atlantic ;  who  had  con- 
quered for  his  country  one  great  em- 
pire on  the  frozen  shores  of  Ontario, 
and  another  under  the  tropical  sun 
near  the  mouths  of  the  Ganges.  It  was 
not  in  the  nature  of  things  that  popu- 
larity such  as  he  at  this  time  enjoyed 
should  be  permanent.  That  popularity 
had  lost  its  gloss  before  his  children 
were  old  enougli  to  understand  that 
their  father  was  a  great  man.  He  was 
at  length  placed  in  situations  in  which 
neither  his  talents  for  administration 
.lor  his  talents  for  debate  appeared  to 
the  best  advantage.  The  energy  and 
decision  which  had  eminently  fitted 
him  for  the  direction  of  war  were 
71  ot  needed  in  time  of  peace.  The 
lofty  and  spirit-stirring  eloquence, 
I  jhich  had  made  him  supreme  in  the 
U/ouse  of  Commons,  often  fell  dead  on 
he  House  of  Lords.     A  ci-uel  malady 


66  William  Pitt. 

racked   his  joints,  and  left  his  joii  its 
only  to  fall  on  his  nerves  and  on  I'^^s 
brain.     During  the  closing  j^ears  of  t^^'s 
life,  he  was  odious  to  the  court,  and  yet 
was  not  on  cordial  terms  with  the  great 
body  of  the  opposition. ,   Chatham  was 
only   the   ruin  of  Pitt,  but   an   awful 
and  majestic  ruin,  not  to  be  contem- 
plated by  any   man  of  sense  and  feel- 
ing without  emotions  resembling  those 
which  are  excited  by  the  remains  of 
tlie  Parthenon  and  of  the  Colisenrn.  , 
In  one  respect  the  old  c^acesman  was  > 
eminently  happy.     Whatever  might  be 
the   vicissitudes  of  his  public  life,  he  . 
never  failed  to  find  peace  and  love  by 
his  own  hearth.     He  loved  all  his  chil- 
dren, and  was  loved  by  them;  and,  of 
all  his  children,  the   one  of  whom  he 
was  fondest  and  proudest  was  his  sec- 
ond son. 

The  child's  genius  and  ambition  difv 
played  themselves  with  a  rare  and  al- 


William  Pitt.  67 

most  unnatural  precocity.  At  seven, 
tl;e  interest  which  he  took  in  grave 
subjects,  the  ardor  with  which  he  pur- 
sued his  studies,  and  the  sense  and  vi- 
vacity of  his  remarks  on  books  and  on 
events,  amazed  his  parents  and  instruc- 
tors. One  of  his  sa3nngs  of  this  date 
was  reported  to  his  mother  by  his  tutor. 
In  August,  1776,  when  the  world  w^as 
agitated  l)y  the  news  that  Mr.  Pitt  had 
i^tcome  Earl  of  Chatham,  little  William 
■  exclaimea,  "I  am  glad  that  I  am  not 
the  eldest' bOiiV  T  want  to  speak  in  the 
House  of  Commons  lik^  papa."  A 
.l^tt^er^is  eXtnnt  in  which  Lady  Chat- 
ham, a  woman  of  considerable  abilities, 
remarked  to  her  lord,  that  their  younger 
son  at  twelve  had  left  far  behind  him 
his  elder  brother,  w^ho  was  fifteen. 
"The  fineness,"  she  wrote,  "  of  AVil- 
liam's  mind,  makes  him  enjoy  with  the 
greatest  pleasure  what  would  be  above 
tjie  reach  of  any  other  creature  of  his 


68  William  Pitt. 

small  age."     At  fourteen  the  lad  was 
.in  intellect  a  man.     Hayley,  who  mot, 
him  at  Lyme  in  the  summer  of  1773, 
was   astonished,   delighted,  and  some- 
what overawed,  by   hearing   wit  and 
wisdom  from  so  young  a  mouth.     The 
poet,  indeed,  was  afterwards  s  )rry  that 
his  shyness   had   prevented  L'iJ  f^'oin 
submitting  the   plan    of  an   extensive 
literary  work,  which  he  was  then  me^.- 
itating,  to  the  judgment  of  this  extra- 
ordinary boy.     The  boy,  indeed,  had 
already    written    a    tragedy,    bad    oi 
course,  but  not  worse  than  the  trage-'j// 
dies  of  his  friend.     This  .^pi&ce  i?  «^ti!l  ^ 
preserved  at  Chevening,  and  is  in  some 
respects  highly  curious.     There  is  no 
love.     The  wjiole  plot  is  political ;  and 
it  is  remarkable  that  tlie  interest,  such 
as  it  is,  turns  on  a  contest  about  a  re- 
gency. On  one  side  is  a  faithful  servant 
of  the  Crown,  on  the  other  an  ambi- 
tious and  unprincipled  conspirator.    At 


William  JPitt,  60 

length  the  King,  who  had  heen  miss- 
ing, reappears,  resumes  his  power,  and 
fpwarJs  the  faithful  •  defender  of  his 
,■^ts.  A  reader  wlio  shoukl  judge 
only  by  internal  evidence,  would  have 
no  liGsitation  in  pronouncing  that  the 
plav  was  written  by  some  Pittite 
poetaster  at  the  time  of  the  rejoicings 
for  tlie  rc^.o^ "rj  of  George  the  Third 
in' 1789. 

The  pleasure  with  which  William's 
parents  observed  the  rapid  develop- 
ment of  his  intellectual  powers  was  al- 
loyed by  apprehensions  about  his  health. 
He  shot  up  alarmingly  fast;  he  was 
often  ill,  and  always  weak ;  and  it  was 
feared  that  it  would  be  impossible  to 
rear  a  stripling  so  tall,  so  slender,  apd 
so  feeble.  Port  wine  was  prescribed 
by  his  medical  advisers ;  and  it  is  said 
that  he  was,  at  fourteen,  accustomed  to 
take  this  agreeable  physic  in  quantities 
which  would,  in  our  abstemious  age,  be 


10  William  Pitt, 

thought  miicli  more  than  sufficient  for 
any  full-grown  man.  i  This  regimen, 
though  it  would  probab'y  have  killed 
ninety-nine  boys  out  of  a  hundred, 
seems  to  have  been  well  suited  to  the 
peculiarities  of  William's  constitution ; 
for  at  fifteen  he  ceased  to  be  molested 
by  disease,  and,  though  never  a  strong 
man,  continued,  during  many  years  of 
labor  and  anxiety,  of  nights  passed  in 
debate  and  of  summers  passed  in  Lon- 
don, to  be  a  tolerably  health}^  one.  It 
was  probably  on  account  of  the  deli- 
cacy of  his  frame  that  he  was  not  edu- 
cated like  other  boys  of  the  same  rank. 
Almost  all  the  eminent  English  states- 
men and  orators  to  whom  he  was  after- 
wards opposed  or  allied,  North,  Fox, 
Shelburne,  Windham,  Grey,  Wellesley, 
Grenville,  Sheridan,  Canning,  went 
through  the  training  of  great  public 
schools.  Lord  Chatham  had  himself 
been  a  distinguished  Etonian  ;  and  it 


William  Pitt.  71 

is  seldom  that  a  distinguished  Etonian 
forgets  his  obligations  to  Eton.  But 
William's  infirmities  required  a  vigi- 
lance and  tenderness  such  as  could  be 
found  only  at  home.  He  was  therefore 
bred  under  the  paternal  roof.  His  stu- 
dies were  superintended  by  a  clergy- 
man named  Wilson  ;  and  those  studies, 
though  often  interrupted  by  illness, 
were  prosecuted  with  extraordinary 
success.  Before  the  lad  had  completed 
his  fifteenth  year,  his  knowledge  both 
of  the  ancient  languages  and  of  mathe- 
matics was  such  as  very  few  men  of 
eighteen  then  carried  up  to  college. 
He  was  therefore  sent,  towards  the 
close  of  the  year  1TT3,  to  Pembroke 
Hall,  in  the  university  of  Cambridge. 
So  young  a  student  required  much 
more  than  the  ordinary  care  which  a 
college  tutor  bestows  on  undergradu- 
<ites.  The  governor,  to  whom  the  di- 
rection  of  William's    academical    life 


72  William  JPiti, 

was  confided,  was  a  baclielor  of  arts 
named  Pretyman,  who  had  been  senior 
wrangler  in  the  preceding  year,  and 
who,  though  not  a  man  of  prepossess- 
mg  appearance  or  brilliant  parts,  was 
eminently  acute  and  laborious,  a  sound 
scholar,  and  an  excellent  geometrician. 
At  Cambridge,  Pretyman  was,  during 
more  than  two  years,  the  inseparable 
companion,  and  indeed  almost  the  only 
companion,  of  his  pupil.  A  close  and 
lasting  friendship  sprang  up  between 
the  pair.  The  disciple  was  able,  be- 
fore  he  completed  his  twenty-eighth 
year,  to  make  his  preceptor  bishop  of 
Lincoln  and  dean  of  St.  Paul's ;  and 
the  preceptor  showed  his  gratitude  by 
"^-riting  a  Life  of  the  disciple,  which 
^enjoys  the  distinction  of  bemg  the  worst 
biographical  work  of  its  size  in  the 
world. 

Pitt,  till  he  graduated,  had  scarcely 
one  acquaintance,  attended  chapel  reg- 


William  Pitt,  73 

iilarlj  morning  and  evening,  dined 
eveiy  day  in  hall,  and  never  went  to  a 
single  evening  party.  At  seventeen, 
he  was  admitted,  after  the  bad  fashion 
of  those  times,  by  right  of  birth,  with- 
out any  examination,  to  the  degree  ol 
Master   of   Arts.      But  he   continued 

i  during  some  years  to  reside  at  college, 

}  and  to  apply  himself  vigorously,  under 
Prety man's  direction,  to  the  studies  of 
the  place,  while  mixing  freely  in  the 
best  academic  society. 

The  stock  of  learning  which  Pitt  laid 
in  during  this  part  of  his  life  was  cer- 
tainly ver^  extraordinary.  h\  fact,  it 
was  all  that  he  ever  possessed ;  for  lie 

_  very  early  became  too  busy  to  have 
any  spare  time  for  books.  The  work 
'in  which  he  took  the  greatest  delight 

I  "was  Newton's  Principia.  His  liking 
for  mathematics,  indeed,  amounted  to 
a  passion,  which,  in  the  opinion  of  his 
themselves    distinguished 


74  William  JPitt. 

mathematicians,  required  to  be  cliecked 
/  rather  than  encouraged.  Tlie  acute- 
ness  and  i-eadiness  with  which  he  solved 
■  problems  was  pronounced  by  one  of 
the  ablest  of  the  moderators,  who  in 
tliose  days  presided  over  the  disputa- 
tions in  the  scho'ols,  and  conducted  the 
examinations  of  the  Senate-House,  to  be 
u'nri vailed  in  the  university.  JSTor  was 
the  youth's  proficiency  in  classical 
learning  less  remarkable.  In  one  re- 
spect, indeed,  he  appeared  to  disad- 
vantage when  compared  w^ith  even 
second-rate  and  third-rate  men  from 
public  schools.  He  had  never,  while 
under  Wilson's  care,  been  in  the  habit 
of  composing  in  the  ancient  languages  ; 
and  lie  therefore  never  acquired  that 
knack  of  versification  which  is  some- 
times possessed  by  clever  boys  whose 
knowledge  of  the  language  and  litera- 
ture of  Greece  and  Rome  is  very  su- 
perficial.    It  would  have  been  utterly 


William  Pitt.  76 

out  of  his  power  to  produce  such  charm- 
ing elegiac  lines  as  those  in  -which 
Welleslej  bade  farewell  to  Eton,  or 
«nch  Yirgilian  hexameters  as  those  in 
which  Canning  described  the  pilgrim- 
,  age  to  Mecca.  But  it  may  be  doubted 
'whether  any  scholar  has  ever,  at  twenty, 
■  Lad  a  more  solid  and  profound  knowl- 
edge of  the  two  great  tongues  of  the 
old  civilized  world.  The  facility  with 
which  he  penetrated  the  meaning  of 
the  most  intricate  sentences  in  the  At- 
tic writers  astonished  veteran  critics. 
He  had  set  his  heart  on  being  inti- 
mately acquainted  with  all  the  extant 
poetry  of  Greece,  and  was  not  satisfied 
till  he  had  mastered  Lycophron's  Cas- 
sandra, the  most  obscure  work  in  the 
.whole  range  of  ancient  literature.  This* 
trange  rhapsody,  the  difficulties  of 
which  have  perplexed  and  repelled 
many  excellent  scholars,  "he  read," 
%ays  his  preceptor,  "  with  an  ease  at 


76  William  Pitt. 

first,  which,  if  I  had  not  witnessed  it,  1 
should  liave  thought  beyond  the  com- 
pass of  human  intellect." 

To  modern  literature  Pitt  paid  com- 
paratively little  attention.     He  knew 
no  living  language  except  French  ;  and 
French    he    knew    very    imperfectly. 
With  a  few  of  the  best  English  writers 
he    was    intimate,    particularly    with 
Shakspeare  and  Milton.     The   debate    , 
in  Pandemonium  was,  as  it  well  de-    )j 
served  to  be,  one  of  his  favorite  pas- 
sages ;  and  his  early  friends  used  to  talk, 
long  after   his  death,  of  the  just  em- 
phasis and  the  melodious  cadence  with  | 
which  they  had  heard  him  I'ecite  the   " 
incomparable   speech  of  Belial.      He 
had  indeed  been  carefull3^  trained  from 
infancy   in   the   art   of  managing   his 
voice,  a  voice  naturally  clear  and  deep- 
toned.    His  father,  whose  oratory  owed 
no  small  part  of  its  effect  to  that  art, 
had  been  a  most  skilful  and  judicious 


William  Fitt.  11 

instructor.  At  a  later  period,  the  wits 
of  Brookes's,  irritated  by  observing, 
night  after  night,  how  powerfully  Pitt's 
sonorons  elocution  fascinated  the  rows 
of  country  gentlemen,  reproached  him 
with  having  been  "■  taught  by  his  dad. 
on  a  stool." 

His  education,  indeed,  was  well 
adapted  to  form  a  great  parliamentary 
speaker.  One  argument  often  urged 
against  those  classical  studies  whick 
occupy  so  large  a  part  of  the  early  life 
of  every  gentleman  bred  in  the  south 
of  our  island  is,  that  they  prevent  him 
from  acquiring  a  command  of  his 
mother  tongue,  and  that  it  is  not  un- 
usual to  meet  with  a  youth  of  excellent 
parts,  who  writes  Ciceronian  Latin 
prose  and  Horatian  Latin  Alcaics,  but 
who  would  find  it  impossible  to  express 
his  thoughts  in  pure,  perspicuous,  and 
forcible  English.  There  may  perhaps 
be  some  truth  in  this  observation.    But 


78  William  Pitt. 

the  classical  studies  of  Pitt  were  car- 
ried on  in  a  peculiar  manner,  and  had 
the  eflect  of  enriching  his  English  vo- 
cabulary, and' of  making  liim  wonder- 
fully expert  in  the  art  of  constructing 
correct  English  sentences.  His  prac- 
tice was  to  look  over  a  page  or  two  of 
a  Greek  or  Latin  author,  to  make  him- 
self master  of  the  meaning,  and  then  to 
read  the  passage  straiglit  forward  into 
his  own  language.  This  pi'actice,  be- 
gun under  his  first  teacher  Wilson,  was 
continued  under  Pretyman.  It  is  not 
strange  that  a  young  man  of  great 
abilities,  who  had  been  exercised  daily 
in  this  way  during  ten  years,  should 
have  acquired  an  almost  unrivalled 
power  of  putting  his  thoughts,  without 
premeditation,  into  words  well  selected 
and  well  arranged. 

Of  all  the  remains  of  antiquity,  the 
orations  were  those  on  which  he  be- 
stowed the  most  minute  examination. 


William  Pitt.  79 

His  favorite  employment  was  to  com- 
2>are  harangues  on  opposite  sides  of  the 
same  question,  to  analyze  them,  and  to 
observe  which  of  the  arguments  of  the 
first  speaker  were  refuted  by  the  sec- 
ond, which  were  evaded,  and  which 
were  left  untouched.  Nor  was  it  only 
in  books  that  he  at  this  time  studied 
theart  of  parliamentary  fencing.  When 
he  was  at  home,  he  had  frequent  op- 
portunities of  hearing  important  de- 
bates at  Westminster;  and  he  heard 
them,  not  only  with  interest  and  enjoy- 
ment, but  with  a  close  scientific  atten- 
tion, resembling  that  with  which  a  dili- 
gent pupil  at  Guy's  Hospital  watches 
every  turn  of  the  hand  of  a  great  sur- 
geon through  a  difficult  operation.  On 
one  of  these  occasions,  Pitt,  a  youth 
whose  abilities  were  as  yet  known  only 
to  his  own  family  and  to  a  small  knot 
of  college  friends,  was  introduced  on 
Che  steps  of  the  throne  in  the  House  of 


60  William  Pitt, 

Lords  to  Fox,  who  was  his  senior  by 
eleven  years,  and  who  was  already  the 
greatest  debater,  and  one  of  the  great- 
est orators,  that  had  appeared  in  Eng- 
land. Fox  used  afterwards  to  relate 
that,  as  the  discussion  proceeded,  Pitt 
repeatedly  turned  to  him,  and  said, 
"  But  surely,  Mr.  Fox,  that  might  be 
met  thus  ; "  or,  "  Yes  ;  but  he  lays  him- 
self open  to  this  retort."  What  the 
particular  criticisms  were.  Fox  had  for- 
gotten; bnt  he  said  that  he  was  much 
struck  at  the  time  by  the  precocity  of 
a  lad  who,  through  the  whole  sitting, 
seemed  to  be  thinking  only  how  all  the 
speeches  on  both  sides  could  be  an- 
swered. 

One  of  the  young  man's  visits  to  the 
House  of  Lords  was  a  sad  and  memo- 
rable era  in  his  life.'  He  had  not  quite 
completed  his  nineteenth  year,  when, 
on  the  7th  of  April,  1778,  he  attended 
his  father  to  Westminster.    A  great  de- 


William  Pitt,  81 

Date  was  expected.  It  was  known  that 
France  had  recognized  the  independ- 
ence of  the  United  States.  The  Duke 
of  Richmond  was  abont  to  declare  his 
opinion  that  all  thought  of  subjugating 
those  states  ought  to  be  relinquished. 
Chatham  had  always  maintained  that 
the  resistance  of  the  colonies  to  the 
mother  country  was  justifiable.  But 
he  conceived,  very  erroneously,  that  on 
the  day  on  which  their  independence 
should  be  acknowledged  the  greatness 
of  England  would  be  at  an  end. 
Though  sinking  under  the  weight  of 
years  and  infirmities,  he  determined, 
in  spite  of  the  entreaties  of  his  family, 
to  be  in  his  place.  His  son  supported 
him  to  a  seat.  The  excitement  and 
exertion  were  too  much  for  the  old 
man.  In  the  very  act  of  addressing 
the  peers,  he  fell  back  in  convulsions. 
A  few  weeks  later  his  corpse  was  borne, 
with  gloom V  pomp,  from  the  Painted 
6*^ 


82  William  Pitt, 

Chamber  to  the  Abbey.  The  fa^  orite 
cliild  and  namesake  of  the  deceased 
statesman  followed  the  coffin  as  chief 
mourner,  and  saw  it  deposited  in  the 
transept  where  his  own  was  destined 
to  lie. 

His  elder  brother,  now  Earl  of  Chat- 
ham, had  means  sufficient,  and  barely 
sufficient,  to  support  the  dignity  of  the 
peerage.  The  other  members  of  the 
tamily  were  poorly  provided  for.  Wil- 
liam had  little  more  than  three  hnndred 
a-year.  It  was  necessary  for  him  to 
follow  a  profession.  He  had  already 
Degun  to  eat  his  terms.  In  the  spring 
of  1780  he  came  of  age.  He  then 
quitted  Cambridge,  was  called  to  the 
bar,  took  chambers  in  Lincoln's  Inn, 
and  joined  the  western  cii'cnit.  In  the 
autumn  of  that  year  a  general  election 
took  place  ;  and  he  offered  himself  as 
'  a  candidate  for  the  university  ;  but  he 
was  at  the  bottom  of  the  poll.     It  is 


Willi  am  Pitt.  83 

said  that  the  grave  doctors  who  then 
eat ,  robed  in  scarlet,  on  tlie  benches  of 
Golgotha,  thought  it  great  presumption 
in  so  young  a  man  to  solicit  so  high  a 
distinction.  He  was,  however,  at  the 
request  of  a  hereditary  friend,  the 
Duke  of  Rutland,  brought  into  parlia- 
ment by  Sir  James  Lowther  for  the 
borough  of  Appleby. 

The  dangers  of  the  country  were  at 
that  time  such  as  might  well  have  dis- 
turbed even  a  constant  mind.  Army 
after  army  had  been  sent  in  vain 
against  the  rebellious  colonists  of  E'orth 
America.  On  pitched  fields  of  battle 
the  advantage  had  been  with  tlie  dis- 
ciplined troops  of  the  mother  country. 
But  it  was  not  on  pitched  fields  of  battle 
that  the  event  of  such  a  contest  could 
be  decided.  An  armed  nation,  with 
Uunger  and  the  Atlantic  for  auxiliaries, 
was  not  to  be  subjugated.  Meanwhile, 
the  House  of  Bourbon,  humbled  to  the 


A 


84  William  .Pitt, 

dust  a  few  years  before  by  the  genius 
and  vigor  of  Chatham,  had  seized  the 
opportunity  of  revenge.  France  and 
Spain  were  united  against  us,  and  had 
recently  been  joined  by  Holland.  The 
command  of  the  Mediterranean  had 
been  for  a  time  lost.  The  British  flag 
had  been  scarcely  able  to  maintain  it- 
self in  the  British  Channel.  The  north- 
ern powers  professed  neutrality  ;  but 
heir  neutrality  had  a  menacing  aspect. 
In  the  East,  Hyder  had  descended  on 
the  Carnatic,  had  destroyed  the  little 
army  of  Baillie,  and  had  spread  terror 
even  to  the  ramparts  of  Fort  Saint 
George.  The  discontents  of  Ireland 
threatened  nothing  less  than  civil  war. 
In  England  the  authority  of  the  gov- 
ernment had  sunk  to  the  lowest  point. 
The  King  and  the  House  of  Commons 
were  alike  unpopular.  The  cry  for 
parliamentary  reform  was  scarcely  less 
loud  and  vehement  than  in  the  autumn 


William  Pitt.  86 

of  1830.  Formidable  associadons, 
headed,  not  by  ordinary  demagogues, 
but  by  men  of  high  rank,  stainless 
character,  and  distinguished  ability,  de- 
manded a  revision  of  the  representative 
system.  The  populace,  emboldened  by 
the  impotence  and  irresolution  of  the 
government,  had  recently  broken  loose 
from  all  restraint,  besieged  the  cham- 
bers of  the  legislature,  hustled  peers, 
hunted  bishops,  attacked  the  residences 
of  ambassadors,  opened  prisons,  burned 
and  pulled  down  houses.  London  had 
presented  during  some  days  the  aspect 
of  a  city  taken  by  storm ;  and  it  had 
been  necessary  to  form  a  camp  among 
the  trees  of  St.  James's  Park. 

In  spite  of  dangers  and  difficulties, 
abroad  and  at  home,  George  the  Third, 
with  a  firmness  which  had  little  affinity 
with  virtue  or  with  wisdom,  persisted 
.n  his  determination  to  put  down  the 
A-merican  rebels  by  force  of  arms ;  and 


86  WiUia7n  Pitt. 

his  irinisters  submitted  their  judgment 
lo  his.  Some  of  them  were  probably 
actuated  merely  by  selfish  cupidity, 
but  their  chief,  Lord  North,  a  man  ot 
high  honor,  amiable  temper,  winning 
manners,  lively  wit,  and  excellent  tal- 
ents both  for  business  and  for  debate, 
must  be  acquitted  of  all  sordid  motives. 
He  remained  at  a  post  from  which  he 
had  long  wished  and  had  repeatedly 
tried  to  escape,  only  because  he  had  not 
sufficient  fortitude  to  resist  the  entreat- 
ies and  reproaches  of  the  King,  who  si- 
lenced all  arguments  by  passionately 
asking  whether  any  gentleman,  any 
man  of  spirit,  could  have  the  heart 
to  desert  a  kind  master  in  the  hour  of 
extremity. 

The  T)pposition  consisted  of  two  par- 
ties which  had  once  been  hostile  to 
each  other,  and  Mdiich  had  been  very 
Blowly,  and,  as  it  soon  appeared,  very 
Imperfectly  reconciled,  but   which   at 


William  Pitt,  87 

this  conjuncture  seemed  to  -act  to- 
gether with  cordiality.  The  hirgei'  of 
these  parties  consisted  of  the  great 
body  of  the  Whig  aristocracy.  Its 
head  was  Charles,  Marquis  of  Rock-' 
ingham,  a  man  of  sense  and  virtue,  and 
in  wealth  and  parliamentary  interest 
equalled  by  very  few  of  the  English 
nobles,  but  afflicted  with  a  nervous 
timidity  which  prevented  him  from 
taking  a  prominent  part  in  debate.  In 
the  House  of  Commons  the  adherents 
of  Rockingham  were  led  by  Fox^  whose 
dissipated  habits  and  ruined  fortunes 
were  the  talk  of  the  whole  town,  but 
whose  commanding  genius,  and  whose 
sweet,  generous,  and  affectionate  dispo- 
sition extorted  the  admiration  and  love 
of  those  who  most  lamented  the  errors 
of  his  private  life.  Burkcj  superior  to 
Fox  in  largeness  of  comprehension,  in 
extent  of  knowledge,  and  in  splendor 
of  imagination,  but  less  skilled  in  that 


88  William  Pitt, 

kind  of  logic  and  in  that  kind  of  rhet- 
oric which  convince  and  persuade 
great  assemblies,  was  willing  to  be  the 
lieutenant  of  a  young  chief  who  might 
have  been  his  son. 

-X^  smaller  section  of  the  opposition 
was  composed  of  the  old  followers  of 
Chatham.  At  their  head  was  William, 
Earl  of  Shelburne,  distinguished  both 
as  a  statesman  and  as  a  lover  of  science 
and  letters.  With  him  were  leagued 
Lord  Camden,  who  had  formerly  held 
the  great  seal,  and  whose  integrity, 
ability,  and  constitutional  knowledge 
commanded  the  public  respect ;  Barre, 
an  eloquent  and  acrimonious  declaimer; 
and  Dunning,  who  had  long  held  the 
first  place  at  the  English  bar.  It  was 
to  this  party  that  Pitt 'was  naturally 
attracted. 

On  the  26th  of  February,  1Y81,  he 
made    his    first    speech    in    -favor   of 

r  Burke's   plan    of    economical   reform. 


William  Fitt.  89 

Fox  stood  lip  at  the  same  moment,  but 
instantly  gave  way.  The  lofty  yet 
animated  deportment  of  the  yonng 
member,  his  perfect  self-possession,  the 
readiness  with  which  he  replied  to  the 
orators  who  had  preceded  him,  the  sil- 
ver tones  of  his  voice,  the  perfect  struc- 
ture of  his  unpremeditated  sentences, 
astonished  and  delighted  his  hearers. 
Burke,  moved  even  to  tears^  exclaimed, 
"  It  is  not  a  chip  of  the  old  block  ;  it  is 
the  old  block  itself."  "  Pitt  will  be  one 
of  the  first  men  in  parliament,"  said  a 
member  of  the  opposition  to  Fox.  "  He 
is  so  already,"  answered  Fox,  in  whose 
nature  envy  had  no  place.  It  is  a  curi- 
ous fact,  well  remembered  by  some 
Avho  were  very  recently  living,  that 
soon  after  this  debate  Pitt's  name  was 
put  up  by  Fox  at  Brookes's. 

On  two  subsequent  occasions  during 
that  session  Pitt  addressed  the  house, 
and  on  both  fully  sustained  the  reputa- 


90  William  Pitt. 

don  which  he  had  acquired  on  his  first 
appearance.  In  the  summer,  after  the 
j)rorogation,  he  again  went  the  western 
circnit,  held  several  briefs,  and  acquit- 
ted himself  in  such  a  manner  that  he 
was  highly  complimented  by  Buller 
from  the  bench,  and  by  Dunning  at  the 
bar. 

On  the  2Tth  of  November  the  par- 
liament reassembled.  Only  forty-eight 
hours  before  liad  arrived  tidings  of  the 
surrender  of  Cornwallis  and  his  army  ; 
and  it  consequently  became  necessary 
to  rewrite  the  royal  speech.  Every 
man  in  the  kingdom,  except  the  King, 
w^as  now  convinced  that  it  was  mere 
madness  to  think  of  conquering  the 
United  States.  In  the  debate  on  the 
report  of  the  address,  Pitt  spoke  with 
even  more  energy  and  brilliancy  than 
on  any  former  occasion.  He  was 
warmly  applauded  by  his  allies ;  but 
it  was  remarked  that  no  person  on  his 


William  Fir  I,  9] 

own  side  of  the  lion  be  was  so  loud  in 
enlogy  as  Henry  Dundas,  tlie  Lord 
Advocate  of  Scotland,  who  spoke  from 
the  ministerial  rani  Tliat  i.ble  and 
versatile  politician  distinctly  foresaw 
the  approaching  downfall  of  the  govern- 
ment with  which  he  was  connected, 
and  was  preparing  to  make  his  own 
escape  from  the  ruin.  From  that  night 
dates  his  connection  with  Pitt,  a  con- 
nection which  soon  became  a  close  inti- 
macy, and  which  lasted  till  it  was  dis- 
solved by  death. 

About  a  fortnight  later,  Pitt  spoke 
in  the  committee  of  supply  on  the 
army  estimates.  Symptoms  of  dissen- 
sion had  begun  to  appear  on  the  trea,». 
<sury  bench.  Lord  George  Germaine, 
the  secretary  of  state,  who  was  esjDC- 
oially  charged  with  the  direction  of  the 
war  in  America,  had  held  language 
not  easily  to  be  reconciled  with  decla- 
rations made  by  the  first  lord  of  the 


92  WiUiam  Pitt. 

treasury,  Pitt  noticed  the  discrepancy 
with  much  force  and  keeiiaess.  Lord 
George  and  Lord  North  began  to  whis- 
per togethc;x- ;  and  W'elbore  Ellis,  an 
ancient  placeman,  who  had  been  draw- 
ing salary  almost  every  quarter  since 
the  days  of  Henry  Pelham,  bent  down 
between  them  to  put  in  a  word.  Such  in- 
terruptions sometimes  discompose  vet- 
eran speakers.  Pitt  stopped,  and,  look- 
ing at  the  group,  said,  with  admirable 
readiness,  "  I  shall  wait  till  Nestor  has 
composed  the  dispute  between  Aga- 
memnon and  Achilles." 

After  several  defeats,  or  victories 
hardly  to  be  distinguished  from  defeats, 
the  ministry  resigned.  The  King,  re- 
luctantly and  ungraciously,  consented 
to  accept  Pockingham  as  first  minister. 
Fox  and  Shelburne  became  secretaries 
of  state.  Lord  John  Cavendish,  one  of 
the  most  upright  and  honorable  of  men, 
was  made  chancellor  of  the  exchequer. 


William  Pitt.  93 

Tlmrlow,  whose  abilities  and  force  of 
cliaracter  had  made  him  the  dictator 
of  the  House  of  Lords,  continued  to 
hold  the  great  seal. 

To  Pitt  was  offered,  through  Shel-  ' 
bnrne,  the  vice-treasnrership  of  Ireland, 
one  of  the  easiest  and  most  highly  paid 
places  in  the  gift  of  the  Crown  ;  but  the 
offer  was,  without  hesitation,  declined. 
The  young  statesman  had  resolved  io^ 
accept  no  post  which  did  not  entitle 
him  to  a  seat  in  the  cabinet ;  and,  a 
few  days  later,  he  announced  that  reso- 
lution in  the  Honse  of  Commons.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  the  cabinet 
was  then  a  much  smaller  and  more  se- 
lect body  than  at  present.  We  have 
seen  cabinets  of  sixteen.  In  the  time 
of  our  grandfathers  a  cabinet  of  ten 
or  eleven  was  thought  inconveniently 
large.  Seven  was  a  usual  number.  Even 
Burke,  who  had  taken  the  lucrative 
office   of  paymaster,   was    not  in   the 


94  Willimm  Fit*. 

cabinet.  Many  therefore  thonglit  Pitt's 
declaration  indecent.  He  himself  was 
sorry  that  he  had  made  it.  The  words, 
he  said  in  private,  had  escaped  him  in 
the  heat  of  speaking;  and  he  had  no 
sooner  uttered  them  than  he  would 
have  given  tlie  world  to  recall  them. 
They,  however,  did  liim  no  harm  with 
the  public.  The  second  William  Pitt, 
it  was  said,  had  shown  that  he  had  in- 
herited the  spirit  as  well  as  the  genius 
of  the  first.  In  the  son,  as  in  the  fath- 
er, there  might  perhaps  be  too  much 
pride ;  but  there  was  nothing  low  or 
sordid.  It  might  be  called  arrogance 
in  a  young  barrister,  living  in  cham- 
bers on  three  hundred  a  year,  to  refuse  a 
salary  of  live  thousand  a  year,  merely 
because  he  did  not  choose  to  bind  him- 
self to  speak  or  vote  for  plans  which 
he  had  no  share  in  framing ;  but  surely 
Biich  arrogance  was  not  very  far  re* 
moved  from  virtue. 


Lot  Ai»4,ejes,  \^ai. 

William  FHt.  ft 

Pitt£avea.general  support  to  the  ad- 
ministration of  Rockingham,  but  omit- 
ted, in  the  mean  time,  no  opportunity 
of  courting  that  ultra-whig  party  which 
the  persecution  of  Wilkes  and  the  Mid- 
dlesex election  had  called  into  exist- 
ence, and  which  the  disastrous  events 
of  war,  and  the  triumph  of  republic 
can  principles  in  America,  had  made 
formidable  both  in  numbers  and  in 
temper.  He  supported  a  motion  for^ 
shortening  tlie  duration  of  parliaments. 
He  made  a  motion  for  a  committee  to 
examine  into  the  state  of  the  represen- 
tation, and,  in  the  speech  by  which  that 
motion  was  introduced,  avowed  him- 
self the  enemy  of  the  close  borous^lis, 
the  strongholds  of  that  corruption  to 
which  he  attributed  all  the  calamities 
of  the  nation,  and  which,  as  he  phrased 
it  in  .one  of  those  exact  and  sonorous 
sentences  of  which  lie  had  a  boundless 
command,  had  grown  with  the  growth 


96  William  Pitt, 

of  England  and  strengthened  with  hei 
strength,  but  had  not  diminished  with 
her  diminution,  or  decayed  with  her 
decay.  On  this  occasion  he  was  sup- 
ported by  Fox.  The  motion  was  lost 
b}^  only  twenty  votes  in  a  house  of 
more  than  three  hundred  members. 
The  reformers  never  again  had  so  good 
a  division  till  the  year  1831. 

The  new  administration  was  strong 
in  abilities,  and  was  more  popular  than 
any  administration  which  had  held  of- 
fice since  the  first  year  of  George  the 
Third,  but  was  hated  by  the  King,  hesi- 
tatingl}^  supported  by  the  parliament, 
and  torn  by  internal  dissensions.  The 
chancellor  was  disliked  and  distrusted 
by  almost  all  his  colleagues.  The  two 
secretares  of  state  regarded  each  other 
with  no  friendly  feeling.  The  line  be- 
tween their  departments  had  not  .been 
traced  with  precision  ;  and  there  were 
consequently  jealousies,  encroachments 


William  Pitt  07 

and  complaints.  It  was  al '  diat  Rock- 
ingham could  do  to  keep  the  peace  in 
his  cabinet;  and  before  the  cabinet 
had  existed  three  months,  '  ."ockinghani 
died. 

In  an  instant  all  was  confusion.  The 
adherents  of  the  deceased  statesman 
looked  on  the  Duke  of  Portland  as 
their  chief.  The  King  placed  Shel- 
burne  at  the  head  of  the  treasury. 
Fox,  Lord  John  Cavendish,  and  Burke, 
immediately  resigned  their  offices  ;  and 
the  new  prime  minister  was  left  to  con- 
stitute a  government  out  of  very  defec- 
tive materials.  His  own  parliamentary 
talents  were  great ;  but  he  could  not  be 
in  the  place  where  parliamentary  tal- 
ents were  most  needed.  It  was  neces- 
sary to  find  some  member  of  the  House 
of  Commons  who  could  confront  the 
great  orators  of  the  opposition  ;  and 
Pitt  alone  had  the  eloquence  and  the 
courage  which  were  required.     He  was 


98  William  Pitt. 

the  great  place  of  chancellor 
exchequer,  and  he  accepted  it. 

scarcely  completed  his  twenty- 
third  year. 

The  parliament  was  speedily  pro- 
rogued. During  the  recess,  a" negotia- 
tion for  peace  which  had  been  com- 
menced under  llockino^ham  wasbrous^ht 
to  a  successful  termination.  England 
acknowledged  the  independence  of  her 
revolted  colonies  ;  and  she  ceded  to 
her  European  enemies  some  places  in 
the  Mediterranean,  and  in  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico.  But  the  terms  which  she  ob- 
tained were  quite  as  advantageous  and 
honorable  as  the  events  of  the  war  en- 

L titled  her  to  expect,  or  as  she  was  like- 
ly to  obtain  by  persevering  in  a  contest 
against  immense  odds.  All  her  vital 
parts,  all  the  real  sources  of  her  power 
remained  uninjured.  She  preserved 
even  her  dignity  ;  for  she  ceded  to  the 
I     House  of  Bourbon  only  part  of  what 


William  Pitt.  99 

filie  had  won  from  that  lioiise  in  pre- 
vious wars.     Slie  retained  her  Indian 
empire  undiminished  ;  and,  in  spite  of 
yihe  mightiest  efforts  of  two  great  mon-- 
archies,  her  flag  still  wavtv;  '.^n  tli^rock 
of  Gibraltar.  There  is  noi  die  ^lightest 
reason  to  believe  that  Fox,  if  iic  ■:  •' 
remained  in  office,   w^onld  have   hesi- 
tated one  moment  about  concluding  a 
treaty  on  such  conditions.     Unhappily 
that  great  and  most  amiable  man  was, 
at  this  crisis,   hurried  by  his   passions 
into  an  error  which  made  his  genius 
and  his  virtues,  during   a  long  course 
of  j^ears,  almost  useless  to -his  country. 
He  saw  that  the  great  body  of  the 
Jlouse  of  Commons  was  divided  into 
^;three  jDarties,  his  .own,  that  of  E'orth, 
land  that  of  Shelburne ;  that  noi^e  of 
ihose  three  parties  was  large  enough  to 
stand  alone  ;  that,  therefore,  unless  two 
of  them  united,  there  must  be  a  mis- 
erably feeble   administration,  or,  more 


lOO  William  Pitt, 

probably,  a  rapid  succession  of  misera- 
bly feeble  administrations,  and  this  at 
a  time  when  a  strong  government  was 
essential  to  the  prosperity  and  respecta- 
bility of  tlie  nation.  It  was  then  ne- 
cessary and  right  that  there  should  be 
a  coalition.  To  every  possible  coali- 
tion/there were  objections.  But,  of  all 
nfJssible  coalitions,  that  to  which  there 
were  the  fewest  objections,  was  un- 
doubtedly a  coalition  between  Shel- 
burne  and  Fox.  It  would  have  been 
generally  applauded  by  the  followers 
of  both.  It  might  have  been  made 
without  any  sacrifice  of  public  princi- 
ple on  the  part  of  either.  Unhappily, 
recent  bickerings  had  left  in  the  mind 
of  Fox  a  profound  dislike  and  distrust 
of  Shelburne.  Pitt  attempted  to  medi- 
ate, and  was  authorised  to  invite  Fox 
to  return  to  the  service  of  the  Crown. 
"  Is  Lord  Shelburne,"  said  Fox,  "  to 
remain  prime  minister  ?  "    Pitt  answer- 


^ilUam  Pitt.  101 

ed  in  the  aflSrmative.  *'  It  is  impossible 
that  I  can  act  under  him,"  said  Fox. 
"  Then  negotiation  is  at  an  end,"  said 
Pitt ;  "for  I  cannot  betray  him."  Thus 
the  two  statesmen  parted.  Tliej  were 
never  again  in  a  private  room  together. 
As  Fox  and  his  friends  would  not 
treat  with  Shelburne,  nothing  remained 
to  them  but  to  treat  with  North.  That 
fatal  coalition,  which  is  emphatically 
called  '^  The  Coalition,"  was  formed,  x, 
]N"ot  three  quarters  of  a  year  had  elaps-  \ 
ed  since  Fox  and  Burke  had  threatened 
Norm  with  impeachment,  and  had  de- 
smbed  him,  night  after  night,  as  the 
most  arbitrary,  the  most  co'rrupt,  the 
most  incapable  of  ministers.  They  now 
allied  themselves  with  him  for  the  pur- 
pose of  driving  from  office  a  statesman 
with  whom  they  cannot  be  said  to  have 
differed  as  to  any  important  question. 
"Nor  had  they  even  the  prudence  and 
tjie  patience  to  wait  for  some  occasion 


102  William  Pitt. 

on  wliicli  they  might,  without  incon- 
sistency, have  combined  with  their 
old  enemies  in  opposition  to  the  govern- 
ment. That  nothing  might  be  wanting 
to  the  scandal,  the  great  orators  who 
had,  during  seven  years,  thundered 
against  the  war,  determined  to  join 
with  the  authors  of  that  war  in  passing 
a  vote  of  censure  on  the  peace. 

The  parliament  met  before  Christ- 
mas 1782.  But  it  was  not  till  January 
1783  that  the  preliminary  treaties  were 
signed.  On  the  17th  of  February  they 
were  taken  into  consideration  by  the 
House  of  Commons.  There  had  been, 
during  some  days,  floating  rumors  that 
Fox  and  North  had  coalesced ;  and  the 
debate  indicated  but  too  clearly  that 
those  rumors  were  not  unfotmded.  Pitt 
was  suffering  from  indisposition :  he 
did  not  rise  till  his  own  strength  and 
that  of  his  hearers  were  exhausted  ;  and 
be  was  consequently  less  successful  than 


William  Fltt.  103 

on  any  rormer  occasion.  Ills  admirers 
owned  tliat  his  speech  was  feeble  and 
petulant.  He  so  far  forgot  himself  as 
to  advise  Sheridan -to  confine  himself 
to  amusing  theatrical  audiences.  This 
ignoble  sarcasm  gave  Sheridan  an  op- 
portunity of  retorting  with  great  felicity. 
"  After  what  I  have  seen  and  heard  to- 
night," he  said,  "  I  really  feel  strongly 
tempted  to  venture  on  a  competition 
with  so  great  an  artist  as  Ben  Jonson, 
and  to  bring  on  the  stage  a  second  An- 
gry Boy."  On  a  division,  the  address 
proposed  by  the  supporters  of  the  gov- 
ernment was  rejected  by  a  majority  of 
sixteen. 

But  Pitt  was  not  a  man  to  be  dis- 
heartened by  a  single  failure,  or  to  be 
put  down  by  the  most  lively  repartee. 
When,  a  few  days  later,  the  opposition 
pi'oposed  a  resolution  directly  censuring 
the  ti-eaties,  he  spoke  \\\\\\  an  eloquence, 
energy,  and  dignity,  which  raised  his 


104  William  Pitt. 

fame  and  popularity  higher  than  ever. 
To  the  coalition  of  Fox  and  North  he 
alluded  in  language  which  drew  forth 
tumultuous  applause  from  his  followers. 
"If,"  he  said,  "  this  ill-oniened  and  un- 
natural marriage  be  not  yet  consum- 
mated, I  know  of  a  just  and  lawful  im- 
pediment; and,  in  the  name  of  the 
public  weal,  I  forbid  the  banns." 
The  ministers  were  again  left  in  a 
ff  minority,  and  Shelburne  consequently 
'  tendered  his  resignation.  It  was  ac- 
cepted :  but  the  King  struggled  long 
and  hard  before  he  submitted  to  the 
terms  dictated  by  Fox,  whose  faults  he 
detested,  and  whose  high  spirit  and 
powerful  intellect  he  detested  still 
more.  The  first  place  at  the  board 
of  treasury  was  repeatedly  offered  to 
Pitt:  but  the  offer,  though  tempting, 
was  steadfastly  declined.  The  young 
man,  whose  judgment  was  as  preco- 
cious as  his   eloquence,  saw   that  his 


William  Piti.  105 

time  wab  coming,  but  wao  not  come, 
and  was  deaf  to  royal  importunities  and 
reproaches.  His  Majesty,  bitterly  com- 
plaining of  Pitt's  faintheartedness,  tried 
to  break  the  coalition.  Every  art  of 
seduction  was  practised  on  ]S"orth,  but 
in  vain.  During  several  weeks  the 
country  remained  without  a  govern- 
ment. It  was  not  till  all  devices  had 
failed,  and  till  the  aspect  of  the  House 
of  Commons  became  threatening,  that 
the  King  gave  way.  The  Duke  of  Port- 
land was  declared  first  lord  of  the 
treasury.  Thurlow  was  dismissed.  Fox 
and  Kortli  became  secretaries  of  state, 
wdth  power  ostensibly  equal.  But  Fox 
was  !he  real  prime  minister. 

The  year  was  far  advanced  before 
'the  new  arrangements  were  completed  ; 
and  nothing  very  important  was  done 
during  the  remainder  of  the  session. 
Pitt,  now  seated  on  tlie  opposition 
bench,  brought  the  question  of  parlia* 


V 


'J 


106  William  Fitt. 

mentaiy  reform  a  second  time  under 
the  consideration  of  the  Commons.  He 
proposed  to  add  to  tlie  house  at  once  a 
hundred  county  members  and  several 
members  for  metropolitan  districts,  and 
to  enact  that  every  borough  i^n  which 
an  election  committee  should  report 
tliat  the  majoritj^  of  voters  appeati'ed  to 
be  corrupt,  should  lose  the  franchise. 
The  motion  was  rejected  by  293  votes 
to  149. 

After  the  prorogation,  Pitt  visited^ 
the  Continent  for  the  first  and  last  time. 
His  travelling  companion  was  one  of 
his  most  intimate  friends,  a  young  man 
of  his  own  age,  who  had  already  dis- 
tinguished himself  in  parliament  by 
an  engaging  natural  eloquence,  set  off 
by  the  sweetest  and  most  exquisitely 
modulated  of  human  voices,  and  whose 
affectionate  heart,  caressing  manners, 
and  brilliant  wit,  made  him  the  most 
delightful  of  companions,  William  "VVil- 


William  1/ut.  107 

berforce.  That  was  the  time  of  Aiiglo- 
mania  in  France  ;  and  at  Paris  the  son 
of  the  great  Chatham  was  absohitely 
hunted  by  men  of  letters  and^-womeu 
of  fashion,  and  forced,  much  against  his 
will,  into  political  disputation.  One 
remarkable  saying  which  dropped  from 
him  during  this  tour  has  been  preserv- 
ed. A  French  gentleman  expressed 
some  surprise  at  the  immense  influence 
which  Fox,  a  man.  of  pleasure,  ruined 
by  the  dice-box  and  the  turf,  exercised 
over  the  English  nation.  "  You  have 
not,"  said  Pitt,  "been  under  tlie  wand 
of  the  magician." 

In  E'ovember  1783  the  parliament 

.  met  again.     The  government  had  irre- 

jsistible  strength  in  the  House  of  Com- 

jmons,  and  seemed  to  be  scared}^  less 

rstrong  in  the  House  of  Lords,  but  was, 

'n  truth,  surrounded  on  every  side  by 

dangers.     The   King  was  impatiently 

waiting  for  the  moment  at  which  he 


108  William  Pitt. 

could  emancipate  himself  from  a  yoke 
which  galled  him  so  severely,  that  he 
had  more  than  once  seriously  thouglit 
of  retiring  to  Hanover ;  and  the  King 
was  scarcely  more  eager  for  a  change 
than  the  nation.  Fox  and  !N^orth  had 
committed  a  fatal  error.  They  ought 
to  have  knoAvn  that  coalitions  between 
pai'ties  which  have  long  been  hostile, 
oan  succeed  only  when  the  wish  for 
•^coalition  pervades  the  lower  ranks  of 
both.  If  the  leaders  umt^beioreTtiei-e 
is  any  disposition  to  union  among  the 
followers,  the  probability  is  that  there 
will  be  a  mutiny  in  both  camps,  and 
that  the  two  revolted  armies  will  make 
a  truce  with  each  other,  in  order  to  be 
revenged  on  those  by  whom  they  think 
that  they  have  been  betrayed.  Thus  it 
was  in  1783.  At  the  beginning  of  that 
eventful  year,  North  had  been  the  re- 
cognized head  of  the  old  Tory  party, 
which,  though  for  a  moment  prostrated 


William  Pitt.  lu. 

by  the  disastrous  issue  of  tlie  American 
war,  was  still  a  great  power  in  the 
state.  To  him  tlie  clergy,  the^  univer- 
sities, and  thai  ^arge  body  of  country 
Mnlemen  whose  rallying  cry  was 
^^'  Church  and  King,"  had  long  looked 
up  with  respect  and  confidence.  Eox_ 
had,  on  the  other  hand,  been  the  idol 
of  the  Whigs,,  and  of  the  whole  body  of 
Protestant  dissenters.  The  coalition  at 
once  alienated  the  most  zealous  Tories 
from  [N'orth,  and  the  most  zealous 
Whigs  from  Fox.  The  university  of 
Oxford,  which  had  marked  its  approba- 
tion of  North's  orthodoxy  hy  electing 
him  chancellor,  the  city  of  London, 
which  had  been,  during  two  and  twenty 
years,  at  war  with  the  Court,  were 
equally  disgusted.  Squires  and  rectors, 
who  had  inherited  the  principles  of  the 
cavaliers  of  the  preceding  century, 
could  not  forgive  their  old  leader  for 
combining  with  disloyal  subjects  in  or- 


.xlO  William  Pitt. 

!  der  to  put  a  force  on  tlie  sovereign. 
The  members  of  the  Bill  of  Eights  So- 
ciety and  of  the  Reform  Associations 
were  enraged  by  learning  that  their 
favorite  orator  now  called  the  great 
chamj^ion  of  tyranny  and  corruption 
his  noble  friend.  Two  great  mnltitndes 
were  at  once  left  withont  any  head, 
and  both  at  once  turned  their  eyes  on 
Pitt.  One  party  saw  in  liim  the  only 
man  who  could  rescue  tlie  King ;  the 
other  saw  in  him  the  only  man  who 
could  purify  the  parliament.  He  was 
supported  on  one  side  by  Archbishop 
Markham,  the  preacher  of  divine  right, 
and  by  Jenkinson,  the  captain  of  the 
Praetorian  band  of  the  King's  friends  ; 
on  the  other  side  by  Jebb  and  Priestley, 
Sawbridge  and  Cartwriglit,Jack  WilkesJ 
and  Home  Tooke.  On  the  benclies  of 
the  House  of  Commons,  however,  the 
vanks  of  the  ministerial  majority  were 
unbroken ;    and    that    any  statesman 


would  vonf :-  <  Dra^e  such  a- 
was  thou,o-h  ^^ij  ossibie.  No  pr-j.  ;  ,;. 
the  Hanoverian  I'ne  had  ever,  under .  ^ ]  ^ 
provocation,  xntured  to  appeal  froii? 
the  represenL.'ive  body  to  the  constit- 
uent body.  Tho  nninisters,  tlierefore, 
notwithstandin;):  the  sullen  looks  and 
muttered  words  of  displeasure  with 
wliich  their  suggestions  were  received 
in  tlie  clocet,  K»twithstanding  the  roar 
of  obloquy  \. 'Jell  vas  ris'ns;  l-iud^n-  and 
louder  every  day  Irom  every  or'^er  of 
the  island,  thought  tliemselves  secure. 
Sucli  was  their  confidence  in  their 
strength  that,  as  soon  as  the  parliament 
had  met,  they  brought  forw^ard  a  sin- 
gularly bold  and  original  plan  for  the 
government  of  the  British  territories  in 
India.  What  was  proposed  was  that 
the  whole  authorit}^,  which  till  that-^ 
time  had  been  exercised  over  those  ter-  ^ 
ritories  by  the  East  India  Comjjanyj 
should  be   transferred  to   seven    com- 


IQ  T'ffilliam  Pitt. 

..rs,  who  were  to  be  named  by 
111'-  p -^^6i^t,  and  were  not  to  be  re- 
,,t,,<y viable  at  the  pleasure  of  the  Crown, 
i^arl  Fitzwilliam,  the  most  intimate 
personal  friend  of  Fox,  was  to  be  chair- 
man of  this  board,  and  the  eldest  son 
of  North  was  to  be  one  of  the  members. 
As  soon  as  the  outlines  of  the  scheme 
were  known,  all  the  hatred  which  the 
coalition  had  excited  burst  forth  with 
an  astounding  explosion.  The  question 
which  ought  undoubtedly  to  have  been 
considgred  as  paramount  to  every  other 
was/\\4iether  the  proposed  change  was 
lii^ly  to  be  benelicial  or  injurious  to 
[he  thirty  millions  of  people  who  were 
subject  to  the  Company.  But  that 
question  cannot  be  said  to  have  been 
even  seriously  discussed.  Burke,  who/ 
whether  right  or  wrong  in  the  conclu- 
sions to  which  he  came,  had  at  least 
the  merit  of  looking  at  the  subject  in 
the  right  point  of  view,  vainly  remind- 


William  Pitt.  113 

ed  his  hearers  of  that  mighty  popula- 
tion whose  daily  rice  might  depend  on 
a  vote  of  the  British  parliament.  He 
spoke,  with  even  more  than  his  wonted 
power  of  thought  and  language,  about 
the  desolation  of  Eohilcund,  about  the 
spoliation  of  Benares,  about  the  evil 
policy  which  had  suffered  the  tanks  of 
the  Carnatic  to  •  go  to  ruin ;  but  he 
could  scarcely  obtain  a  hearing.  The 
contending  parties,  to  their  shame  it 
must  be  said,  would  listen  to  none  but 
Englisli  topics.  Out  of  doors  the  cry 
against  the  ministry  was  almost  univer- 
sal. Town  and  country  were  united. 
Corporations  exclaimed  against  the  vio- 
lation of  the  charter  of  the  greatest  cor- 
p^-ation  in  the  realm.  Tories  and  dem- 
^crats  joined  in  pronouncing  the  pro- 
posed board  an  unconstitutional  body. 
It  was  to  consist  of  Fox's  nominees. 
The  effect  of  his  bill  was  to  give,  not 
to  the  Crown,  but  to  him   personally, 


114  William  Pitt. 

whether  in  office  or  in  opposition,  an 
enormous  power,  a  pati'onage  sufficient 
to  counterbalance  the  patronage  of  the 
Treasury  and  of  the  Admiralty,  and  to 
decide  the  elections  for  fiftT  boroughs. 
He  knew,  it  was  said,  tliat  lie  was  hate- 
ful alike  to  King  and  people  ;  and  he 
had  devised  a  plan  wdilch  Avoukl  make 
him  independent  of  both.  Some  nick- 
named him  Cromwell,  and  some  Carlo 
Khan.  Wilberforce,  with  his  usual 
felicity  of  expression,  and  with  very 
unusual  bitterness  of  feeling,  described 
the  scheme  as  the  genuine  offspring  of 
the  coalition,  as  marked  with  the  fea- 
tures of  both  its  parents,  the  corruption 
of  one  and  the  violence  of  the  other. 
In  spite  of  all  opposition,  however,  the 
bill  was  supported  in  every  stage  by 
great  majorities,  was  rapidly  passed, 
and  was  sent  up  to  the  Lords.  To  the 
general  astonishment,  when  the  second 
reading  w^as  moved  in  the  upper  house, 


William  Pitt,  115 

the  opposition  proposed  an  adjourn- 
ment, and  carried  it  by  eiglitj-seven 
votes  to  seventy-nine.  The  cause  of 
this  strange  turn  of  fortune  was  soon 
known.  Pitt's  cousin.  Earl  Temple, 
had  been  in  the  royal  closet,  and  had 
there  been  authorized  to  let  it  be  known 
that  his  Majesty  would  consider  all  who 
voted  for  the  bill  as  his  enemies.  The 
ignominious  commission  was  perform- 
ed, and  instantly  a  troop  of  lords  of  the 
bedchamber,  of  bishops  who  wished  to 
be  translated,  and  of  Scotch  peers  who 
who  wished  to  be  re-elected,  made  haste 
to  change  sides.  On  a  later  day,  the 
Lords  rejected  the  bill.  Fox  and  ]?Torth 
were  immediately  directed  to  send  their 
seals  to  the  palace  by  their  under  sec- 
retaries ;  and  Pitt  was  appointed  first 
lord  of  the  treasury  and  chancellor  of 
the  exchequer. 

The  general  opinion  was,  that  there 
^'Ould  be    an   immediate   dissolution. 


116  William  Pitt. 

But  Pitt  wisely  determined  to  give  the 
public  feeling  time  to  gather  strength. 
On  this  point  he  differed  from  his  kins- 
man Temple.  The  consequence  was, 
that  Temple,  who  had  been  appointed 
one  of  the  secretaries  of  state,  resigned 
his  office  forty-eight  hours  after  he  had 
accepted  it,  and  thus  relieved  the  new 
government  from  a  great  load  of  un- 
popularity ;  for  all  men  of  sense  and 
honor,  however  strong  might  be  their 
dislike  of  the  India  bill,  disapproved  of 
the  manner  in  which  that  bill  had  been 
thrown  out.  Temple  cariied  away  with 
him  the  scandal  which  the  best  friends 
of  the  new  government  could  not  but 
lament.  The  fame  of  the  young  prime 
minister  preserved  its  whiteness.  He 
could  declare  with  perfect  truth  that, 
if  unconstitutional  machinations  had 
been  employed,  he  had  been  no  party 
to  them. 
He   was,   however,   surrounded    by 


William  Pitt.  11/ 

difficulties  and  dangers.  In  the  Houee 
of  Lords,  indeed,  he  had  a  majority  ; 
nor  could  any  orator  of  the  opposition 
in  that  assembly  be  considered  as  a 
match  for  Thurlow,  who  was  now  again 
chancellor,  or  for  Camden,  who  cor- 
dially supported  the  son  of  his  old 
friend  Chatham.  But  in  the  other 
house  there  was  not  a  single  eminent 
speaker  among  the  official  men  who 
sat  round  Pitt.  His  most  useful  as- 
sistant was  Dundas,  who,  though  he 
had  not  eloquence,  had  sense,  know- 
ledge, readiness,  and  boldness.  On  the 
opposite  benches  was  a  powerful  ma- 
jority, led  l)y  Fox,  who  was  supported 
by  Burke,  North,  and  Sheridan,  The 
heart  of  the  young  minister,  stout  as  it 
was,  almost  died  within  him.  He  could 
not  once  close  his  eyes  on  the  night 
which  followed  Temple's  resignation. 
But,  whatever  his  internal  emotions 
oaight  be,  his  language  and  deportment 


118  William  Pitt. 

indicated  nothing  ^ut  unconquerable 
firmness  and  liaiiglity  confidence  in  liis 
own  powers.  His  contest  against  the 
House  of  Commons  lasted  from  the  17th 
of  December,  1783,  to  the  8th  of  March, 
1784.  In  sixteen  divisions  the  oppo- 
sition triumphed.  Again  and  again  the 
King  was  requested  to  dismiss  his  min- 
isters. But  he  was  determined  to  go 
to  Germany  rather  than  yield.  Pitt's 
resolution  never  wavered.  The  cry  of 
the  nation  in  his  favor  became  ve- 
hement and  almost  furious.  Addresses 
assuring  him  of  public  support  came 
up  daily  from  every  j)art  of  the  king- 
dom. The  freedom  of  the  city  of  Lon- 
don was  presented  to  him  in  a  gold  box. 
He  went  in  state  to  receive  this  mark 
of  distinction.  He  was  sumptuously 
feasted  in  Grocers'  Hall ;  and  the  shop- 
keepers of  the  Strand  and  Fleet  Street 
illuminated  their  houses  in  his  honor. 
These  things  could  not  but  jjroduce  an 


William  Pitt,  119 

effect  within  the  walls  of  parliament. 
The  ranks  of  the  majority  began  to' 
waver ;  a  few  passed  over  to  the  ene- 
my ;  some  skulked  away  ;  many  were 
for  capitulating  while  it  was  still  possi- 
ble to  capitulate  with  the  honors  of 
war.  Negotiations  were  opened  with 
the  view  of  forming  an  administration 
on  a  wide  basis,  but  they  had  scarcely 
been  opened  when  they  w^ere  closed. 
The  opposition  demanded,  as  a  prelim- 
inary article  of  the  treaty,  that  Pitt 
should  resign  the  treasury  ;  and  with 
this  demand  Pitt  steadfastly  refused  to 
comply.  While  the  contest  was  rag- 
ing, the  clerkship  of  the  Pells,  a  sine- 
cure place  for  life,  worth  three  thou- 
sand a-year,  and  tenable  with  a  seat  in 
the  House"  of  Commons,  became  va- 
cant. The  appointment  was  with  the 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer  ;  nobody 
doubted  that  he  would  appoint  himself; 
and   nobody    could  have  blamed  him 


t 


120  William  Pitt, 

if  he  had  done  so  ;  for  such  sinecure 
offices  had  always  been  defended  on 
the  ground  that  they  enabled  a  few 
men  of  eminent  abilities  and  small  in- 
comes to  live  without  any  profession, 
and  to  devote  themselves  to  the  service 
of  the  state.  Pitt,  in  spite  of  the  re- 
monstrances of  his  friends,  gave  the 
Pells  to  his  father's  old  adherent,  Colo- 
nel Barre,  a  man  distinguished  by  tal- 
ent and  eloquence,  but  poor  and  afflict- 
ed with  blindness.  By  this  arrange- 
ment a  pension  which  the  Rockingham 
administration  had  granted  to  Barre 
was  saved  to  the  public.  Never  was 
there  a  happier  stroke  of  policy.  About 
treaties,  wars,  expeditions,  tariifs,  budg- 
ets, there  will  always  be  room  for  dis- 
"pute.  The  policy  which  is  applauded 
by  half  the  nation  may  be  condemned 
by  the  other  half.  But  pecuniary  dis- 
interestedness everybody  comprehends. 
Iris  a  great  thing  for  a  man  who  has 


William  Pitt.  121 

only  three  hundred  a-jear  to  be  able  to 
show  that  lie  considers  three  thousand 
a-jear  as  mere  dirt  beneath  his  feet, 
when  compared  with  the  public  inter- 
est and  the  public  esteem.  Pitt  had  his 
reward.  No  minister  was  ever  more 
rancorously  libelled  ;  but  even  when 
he  was  known  to  be  overwhelmed 
with  debt,  when  millions  were  passing 
through  his  hands,  when  the  w^ealthiest 
magnates  of  the  realm  were  soliciting 
him  for  marquisates  and  garters,  his 
bitterest  enemies  did  not  dare  to  ac- 
cuse him  of  touching  unlawful  gain. 

At  length  the  hard  fought  fight  end 
ed.  A  final  remonstrance,  drawn  u| 
by  Burke  with  admirable  skill,  was 
carried  on  the  8th  of  March  by  a  single 
vote  in  a  full  house.  Had  the  experi- 
ment been  repeated,  the  supporters  of 
the  coalition  would  probably  have  been 
in  a  minority.  But  the  supplies  had 
been  voted ;  the  mutiny  bill  had  been 


122  William  Pitt. 

passed;    and  the  parliament  was  dis 
solved. 

The  popular  constituent  bodies  all  a 
over  the  country  were  in  general  en 
thusiastic  on  the  side  of  the  new  gov- 
ernment. A  hundred  and  sixty  of  the 
supporters  of  the  coalition  lost  their 
seats.  The  first  lord  of  the  treasury 
himself  came  in  at  the  head  of  the  poll 
for  the  university  of  Cambridge.  His 
young  friend,  Wilberforce,  was  elected 
knight  of  the  great  shire  of  York,  in 
opposition  to  the  whole  influence  of  the 
Fitzwilliams,  Cavendishes,  Dundases, 
and  Savilcs.  In  the  midst  of  such 
triumphs  Pitt  completed  his  twenty- 
fifth  year.  He  was  now  the  greatest 
subject  that  England  had  seen  during 
many  generations.  He  domineered  ab- 
solutely over  the  cabinet,  and  was  the 
favorite  at  once  of  the  sovereign,  of 
the  parliament,  and  of  the  nation.    His 


William  Pitt.  123 

father  had  never  been  so  powerfiil,  nor 

.  Walj)ole,  nor  Marlborough. 

^y^\\\Q  narrative  has  now  reached  a 
point,  beyond  which  a  fall  history  of 
the  lifeof  Pitt  would  be  a  history  of 

"TEjiJland,  orrather  of  tlie   wliole^clvl?^ 


ized  world ;  and  for  such  a  history  this 
is  not  the  proper  place.  Here  a  very 
slight  sketch  must  suffice ;  and  in  that 
sketch  prominence  will  be  given  to 
such  points  as  may  enable  a  reader  who 
is  already  acquainted  with  the  general 
course  of  events,  to  form  a  just  notion 
of  the  character  of  the  man  on  whom 
so  much  depended. 

A^  we  wish  to  arrive  at  a  correct 
judgment  of  Pitt's  merits  and  defects, 
we  must  never  forget  that  he  belonged 
to  a  peculiar  class  of  statesmen,  and 
that  he  must  be  tried  by  a  peculiar 
standard.  It  is  not  easy  to  compare 
him  fairly  with  such  men  as  Ximenes 
and  Sully,  Pichelieu  and  Oxenstiernj 


124  William  Pitt. 

John  De  Witt  and  TVarren  Hastings. 
The  means  by  which  those  politicians 
governed  great  communities  were  of 
quite  a  different  kind  from  those  w^hich 
Pitt  was  under  the  necessity  of  employ- 
ing. Some  talents,  which  they  never 
had  any  oj^portunity  of  showing  that 
they  possessed,  were  developed  in 
him  to  an  extraordinary  degree.  In 
some  qualities,  on  the  other  hand,  to 
which  they  owe  a  large  part  of  their 
fame,  he  was  decidedly  their  inferior. 
They  transacted  business  in  their  clo- 
sets, or  at  boards  where  a  few  confi- 
dential councillors  sat.  It  was  his  lot 
to  be  born  in,  an  age  and  in  a  country 
in  which  parliamentary  government 
was  completely  established  ;  his  whole 
training  from  infancy  w^as  such  as 
fitted  him  to  bear  a  part  in  parliamen- 
tary government ;  and  from  the  prime 
of  his  manhood  to  his  death,  all  the 
^    powers  of  his  vigorous  mind  were  al- 


William  Pit'i.  12*? 

r  most  constantly  exerted  in  the  \mness. 
■  parliamentary  government.  He  'Ifl. 
cordingly  became  the  greatest  master 
of  the  whole  art  of  parliamentary  gov- 
ernment that  has  ever  existed,  a  greater 
'  than  Montague  or  Walpole,  a  greater 
than  his  father  Chatham  or  his  rival 
Fox,  a  greater  than  either  of  his  illus- 
trious successors  Canning  and  Peel. 
^r^^^Ja^feimentary  government,  like  ev- 
ery other  contrivance  of  man,  has  its 
advantages  and  its  disadvantages.  On 
the  advantages  there  is  no  need  to  di- 
late. The  history  of  England  during 
the  hundred  and  sev^ity  years  which l,^^'^ 
have  elapsed  since  the  House  of  Com- 
mons became  the  most  powerful  body 
in  the  state,  her  immense  and  still 
growing  prosperity,  her  freedom,  her 
tranquillity,  her  greatness  in  arts,  in 
sciences,  and  in  arms,  her  maritime  as- 
cendency, the  marvels  of  her  pi.blic 
credit,  her  American,  her  African,  her 


TT^r  illiam  Pitt, 
124  ^ 

-T-.iia.li,  her   Asiatic  empires  siiffi- 
xitlj    prove    the    excellence   of  her 
institutions.      But    those    institutions, 
though  excellent,  are  assuredly  not  per- 
fect.     P^irl i a mentary    g^overn nient    is^ 
government   by   spcakiu.o:.     in  such  a 
government,  the  power  of  speaking  is 
the  most  higlily  prized  of  all  the  quali- 
ties which  a  politician  can  possess;  and 
that  power  may  exist,  in   the  highest  i^ 
degree,  without  judgment,  without  for- 
titude,   without   skill   in   reading    the  <x 
characters   of  men  or  the  signs  of  the 
times,  without  anv  knowledi2:e    of  th^"^^ 
principles  of  legislation  or  of  political  *^^ 
economy,    and    without    any    skill   in 
diplomacy  or  in  the  administration  of  «^ 
war.     Nay,  it  may  well   happen   tha| 
those  very  intellectual  qualities  which^ 
give  a  peculiar  charm  to  the  speeches 
of  a   public  man,  may   be  incompati-     1 
ble   with    the    qualities   which   would 
fit    him    to     meet    a 


William  Pitt.  127 

gency  with  promptitude  and  firmness. 

Jt  was  thus  with  Charles  Tuwiishend. 
I^-^^as  thus  with  Windham,  It  was  a 
privilege  to  listen  to  those  accomplished 
and  ingenious  orators.     But  in  a  peril- 

-^us  crisis  they  would  have  been  found 
far  inferior  in  all  the  qualities  of  rulers 
to  such  a  man  as  OHr^jiQromwell,  who 

"talked  nonsense,  or  as  William  the  Si- 
lent, who  did  not  talk  at  all.  AVhen 
parliamentary  government  is  establish- 
ed, a  Charles  Townshend  or  a  Wind- 
ham will  almost  always  exercise  much 
greater  influence  than  such  men  as  the 
great  Protector  of  England,  or  as  the 
founder  of  the  Batavian  commonwealth. 
In  such  a  government,  parliamentary 
talent,  though  quite  distinct  from  the 
talents  of  a  good  executive  or  judicial 
oflicer,  will  be  a  chief  qualitication  for 
executive  and  judicial  office.  From 
tlie  Book  of  Dignities  a  curious  list 
might  be  made  out  of  chancellors  ig- 


128  William  Pitt. 

norant  of  the  principles  of  equity,  and  j 
first  lords  of  the  admiralty  ignorant 
of  the  principles  of  navigation,  of  colo- 
nial ministers  who  could  not  repeat  the 
names  of  the  colonies,  of  lords  of  the 
treasury  who  did  not  know  the  differ- 
ence between  funded  and  unfunded 
debt,  and  of  secretaries  of  the  India 
board  who  did  not  know  whether  the 
Mahrattas  were  Mahometans  or  Hin- 
doos. On  these  grounds,  some  persons,  i^ 
incapable  of  seeing  more  than  one  side 
of  a  question,  have  pronounced  parlia- 
mentary government  a  positive  evil, 
and  have  maintained  that  the  adminis- 
tration would  be  greatly  improved  if 
the  power,  now  exercised  by  a  large 
assembly,  were  transferred  to  a  single 
person.  Men  of  sense  will  probably 
think  the  remedy  very  much  worse 
than  the  disease,  and  will  be  of  opin- 
ion that  there  would  be  small  gain  in 
exchanging   Charles    Townshend    and 


•  William  Pitt.  129 

"Windham  for  the  prince  of  the  peace, 
or  the  poor  slave  and  dog  Steenie. 
*-i^  was  emphaticallj  the  man  of 
parliamentary  government,  the  type  of 
his  class,  the  minion,  the  child,  the 
-spoiled  child,  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. For  the  House  of  Commons  he 
had  a  hereditary,  an  infantine  love. 
Through  his  whole  boyhood,  the  House 
of  Commons  was  never  out  of  his 
thoughts,  or  out  of  the  thoughts  of  his-- 
instructors.  Reciting  at  his  father's 
knee,  reading  Thucydides  and  Cicero 
into  English,  analyzing  the  great  Attic 
speeches  on  the  Embassy  and  on  the 
Crown,  he  was  constantly  in  training 
for  the  conflicts  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. He  w^as  a  distinguished  mem- 
ber of  the  House  of  Commons  at 
twenty-one.  The  ability  which  he  had 
drsplayed  in  the  House  of  Commons 
made  him  the  most  powerful  subject  in 
Europe  before  before  he  was  twenty- 
9 


,V' 


130  William  Pitt.' 

five.  It  would  have  been  happj  for 
himself  and  for  his  country  if  his  eleva- 
tion had  been  deferred.  Eight  or  ten 
years,  dui'ing  which  he  would  have  had 
leisure  and  opportunity  for  reading 
and  reflection,  for  foreign  travel,  for 
social  intercourse  and  free  exchange  of 
thought  on  equal  terms  with  a  great 
variety  of  companions,  would  have  sup- 
plied what,  without  any  fault  on  his 
part,  was  wanting  to  his  powerful  in- 
tellect. He  had  all  the  knowledge 
tliat  lie  could  be  expected  to  have  ;  that 
is  to  say,  all  the  knowledge  that  a  man 
can  acquire  while  he  is  a  student  at  Cam- 
bridge, and  all  the  knowledge  that  a 
man  can  acquire  when  he  is  first  lord 
of  the  treasury  and  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer.  But  the  stock  of  general 
information  wdiich  he  brought  from 
college,  extraordinary  for  a  boy,  was 
far  inferior  to  what  Fox  possessed,  and 
beggarly    when    compared    with    the 


William  Pitt.  131 

massj,  the  splendid,  the  various  treas- 
ures hiid  up  in  the  large  mind  of  Burke. 
After  Pitt  became  minister,  he  had  no 
leisure  to  learn  more  than  was  neces- 
sary for  the  purposes  of  the  day  which 
was  passing  over  him.  What  w^as  ne- 
cessary for  those  purposes  such  a  man 
could  learn  with  little  difficulty.  He 
was  surrounded  by  experienced  and 
able  public  servants.  He  could  at  any 
moment  command  their  best  assistance. 
From  the  stores  which  they  produced 
his  vigorous  mind  rapidly  collected  thow 
materials  for  a  good  parliamentary  ' 
case :  and  that  was  enough.  Les^isla- 
tion  and  administration  were  with  him 
secondary  matters.  To  the  work  of 
framing  statutes,  of  negotiating  treaties, 
of  organizing  fleets  and  armies,  of  send- 
ing forth  expeditions,  he  gave  only  the 
leavings  of  his  time  and  the  di-egs  of 
his  fine  intellect.  The  strength  and 
sap  of  his  mind  were  all  drawn  in  a 


132  William  Pitt, 

different  direction.  It  was  when  the 
House  of  Commons  was  to  be  con- 
vinced and  persuaded  that  he  put  forth 
all  his  powers. 

Of  those  powers  we  must  form  our 
estimate  chiefly  from  tradition  ;  for  of 
all  the  eminent  speakers  of  the  last  age, 
Pitt  has  suffered  most  from  the  report- 
ers. Even  while  he  was  still  living, 
critics  remarked  that  his  eloquence 
could  not  be  preserved,  that  he  must 
be  heard  to  be  appreciated.  They 
more  than  once  applied  to  him  the 
sentence  in  which  Tacitus  describes 
the  fate  of  a  senator  whose  rhetoric 
was  admired  in  the  Augustan  age : 
"  Haterii  canorum  illud  et  profluens 
cum  ipso  simul  exstinctum  est."  There 
is,  however,  abundant  evidence  that 
nature  had  bestowed  on  Pitt  the  talents 
of  a  great  orator ;  and  those  talents  had 
been  developed  in  a  very  peculiar 
manner;  first  by   his   education,  and 


William  JFpt.  .    133 

secondly  by  the  high  official  position 
to  which  he  rose  early,  and  in  which 
he  passed  the  greater  part  of  his  public 

iy^^  his  first  appearance  in  parliament  /\ 
he  showed  himself  superior  to  all  his^  - 
contemporaries  in  command  of  lan- 
guage. He  could  pour  forth  a  long 
succession  of  round  and  stately  periods, 
without  premeditation,  without  ever 
pausing  for  a  word,  w^ithout  ever  re- 
peating a  word,  in  a  voice  of  silver 
clearness,  and  with  a  pronunciation  so 
articulate  that  not  a  letter  was  slurred 
over.  He  had  less  amplitude  of  mind 
and  less  richness  of  imagination  than, 
Burke,  less  ingenuity  than  Windliam, 
less  wit  than  Sheridan,  less  perfect 
mastery  of  dialectical  fence,  and  less 
of  that  highest  sort  of  eloquence  which 
consists  of  reason  and  passion  fused 
together,  tlian  Fox.  Yet  the  almost 
ananimous    judgment    of    those    who 


134     .  William  Pitt. 

were  in  tlie  habit  of  listening  to  that 
remarkable  race  of  men  placed  Pitt,  as 
a  speaker,  above  Burke,  above  Wind- 
ham, above  Sheridan,  and  not  below 
Fox.  His  declamation  was  copious, 
polished,  and  splendid.  In  power  of 
sarcasm  he  was  probably  not  surpassed 
bj  any  speaker,  ancient  or  modern  ; 
and  of  this  formidable  weapon  he  made 
merciless  use.  In  two  parts  of  the 
oratorical  art  which  are  of  the  highest 
value  to  a  minister  of  state  he  was  sin- 
gularly expert.  No  man  knew  better 
how  to  be  luminous  or  how  to  be  ob- 
scure. When  he  wished  to  be  under- 
stood he  never  failed  to  make  himself 
understood.  He  could  with  ease  pre- 
sent to  his  audience,  not  perhaps  an 
exact  or  profound,  but  a  clear,  popular, 
and  plausible  view  of  the  most  exten- 
sive and  complicated  subject.  ITothing 
was  out  of  place  ;  nothing  was  forgot- 
ten;  minute  details,  dates,  sums  of  mo- 


William  Pitt,  135 

nej,  were  all  faitlifully  preserved  in  liis 
memor3\  Even  intricate  questions  of 
finance,  when  explained  bj  him,  seem- 
ed clear  to  the  plainest  man  among  his 
hearers.  On  the  other  hand,  when  he 
did  not  wish  to  be  explicit — and  no 
man  who  is  at  tlie  head  of  affiiirs  al- 
ways wishes  to  be  explicit — he  had  a^^-^ 
marvellous  power  of  saying  nothing  in 
language  which  left  on  his  audience  the 
impression   that   he   had   said  a  greats 

deal.     He  was  at  once  the  only  man 

^— — -  ./ 

— ^ho  could  open  a  budget  without  notes, 
and  the  only  man  who,  as  Windham 
said,  could  speak  that  most  elaborately 
evasive  and  unmeaning  of  human  com- 
positions, a  King's  speech,  without  > 
premeditatiqnj  -^y-^ 

The  effect  of  oratory  will  always,  to  /^ 
i  great  extent,  depend  on  the  charactei 
of  the    orator.     There   perha}~)s   never 
were   two    speakers   whose   eloquence 
had  more  of  what  may  be  called  the 


136  William  Pitt, 

race,  more  of  the  flavor  imparted  by 
moral  qualities,  than  Fox  and  Pitt. 
The  speeches  of  Fox  owe  a  great  part 
of  tlieir  charm  to  that  warmth  and  soft- 
ness of  heart,  that  sympathy  with  hu- 
man suffering,  that  admiration  for  every 
tMng  great  and  beautiful,  and  that 
•^natred  of  cruelty  and  injustice,  wliich 
interest  and  delight  us  even  in  the  most 
defective  reports.  No  person,  on  the 
other  hand,  could  hear  Pitt  without 
perceiving  him  to  be  a  man  of  high, 
intrepid,  and  commanding  spirit,  proud- 
ly conscious  of  his  own  rectitude  and 
of  his  own  intellectual  superiority,  in- 
capable of  the  low  vices  of  fear  and 
envy,  but  too  prone  to  feel  and  to  show 
disdain.  Pride,  indeed,  pervaded  theP' 
wliole  man,  was  written  in  the  harsh, 
rigid  lines  of  his  face,  was  marked  by 
the  way  in  which  he  walked,  in  which 
be  sat,  in  which  he  stood,  and,  above 
all,  in  which  he  bowed.     Such  pride,  of 


William  Pitt.  137 

course,  inflicted  many  wounds.  It  may 
confidently  be  affirmed  that  there  can- 
not be  found,  in  all  the  ten  thousand 
invectives  written  against  Fox,  a  word 
indicatino;  that  his  demeanor  had  ever 
made  a  single  personal  enemy.  On  the 
other  hand,  several  men  of  note  who 
had  been  partial  to  Pitt,  and  who  to 
the  last  continued  to  approve  his  pub- 
lic conduct  and  to  support  his  adminis- 
tration, Cumberland,  for  example,  Bos- 
well,  and  Matthias,  were  so  much  irri-^,^^ 
tated  by  the  contempt  with  which  he 
treated  them,  that  they  complained  in 
print  of  their  wrongs.  But  his  pride, 
though  it  made  him  bitterly  disliked  by 
individuals,  inspired  the  great  body  of 
his  followers  in  parliament  and  through* 
^out  the  country  with  respect  and  confi- 
dence. They  took  him  at  his  own  val 
nation.  They  saw  that  his  self-esteere 
was  not  that  of  an  upstart,  who  wa^ 
drunk  with  good  luck   and  with  ap 


138  William  Pitt.  \ 

plause,  and  who,  if  fortune  turned, 
would  sink  from  arrogance  into  abject 
humility.  It  was  that  of  the  magiiani-  l^, 
mous  man  so  finely  described  by  Aris- 
totle in  tlie  Ethics,  of  the  man  who 
thinks  himself  worthy  of  great  things, 
being  in  truth  worthy.  It  sprang  from 
a  consciousness  of  great  powers  and 
great  virtues,  and  was  never  so  con- 
spicuously displayed  as  in  the  midst  of 
difficulties  and  dangers  which  would 
have  unnerved  and  bowed  down  any 
ordinary  mind.  It  was  closely  con- 
nected, too,  with  an  ambition  which 
had  no  mixture  of  low  cupidity.  There 
was  something  noble  in  the  cynical 
disdain  with  which  the  mighty  minister 
scattered  riches  and  titles  to  right  and 
left  among  those  who  valued  them, 
while  he  spurned  them  out  of  his  own 
way.  Poor  himself,  he  was  surrounded 
by  friends  on  whom  he  had  bestowed 
three  thousand,  six  thousand,  ten  thou- 


William  Pitt,  139 

Band  a-jear.  Plain  Mister  liimself,  he 
had  made  more  lords  than  any  three 
ministers  that  had  preceded  him.  The 
garter,  for  which  the  first  dukes  in  the 
kingdom  were  contending,  was  repeat- 
edlj  offered  to  him,  and  offered  in  vain.  . 
\The  correctness  of  his  private  life  ,A 
added  much  to  the  dignity  of  his  pub- 
lic character.  In  the  relations  of  son, 
brother,  uncle,  master,  friend,  his  con- 
duct was  exemplary.  In  the  small 
circle  of  his  intimate  associations,  he 
was  amiable,  affectionate,  even  playful... 
Tliey  loved  him  sincerely ;  they  re- 
gretted him  long ;  and  they  would 
hardly  admit  that  he  who  was  so  kind 
and  gentle  with  them,  could  be  stern 
and  haughty  with  otliersj^  He  indulg- 
ed, indeed,  somewhat  too  freely  in 
wine,  which  he  had  early  been  directed 
to  take  as  a  medicine,  and  which  use 
had  made  a  necessary  of  life  to  him,'^ 
But  it  was  very  seldom  that  any  indi- 


140  William  Pitt, 

cation  of  undue  excess  could  be  de- 
tected in  liis  tones  or  gestures  ;  and, 
in  truth," two  bottles  of  port  were  little 
more  to  him  than  two  dishes  of  tea. 
He  had,  when  he  was  first  introduced 
into  the  clubs  of  Saint  James's  Street, 
shown  a  strong  taste  for  play ;  but  he 
had  the  prudence  and  the  resolution,  to 
stop  before  this  taste  had  acquired  the 
strength  of  habit.  From  the,  passion, 
which  generally  exercises  the  most  ty- 
rannical dominion  over  the  young  be 
possessed  an  immunity,  which  is  prob- 
ably to  be  ascribed  partly  to  his  tem- 

perament,  and  partly  to  his  situation. 

\  His  constitution  was  feeble :  he  was 
\  very  shy;  and  he  was  very  busy.  The 
'^ti'lctness  of  his  morals  furnished  such 
buffoons  as  Peter  Pindar  and  Captain 
Morris  with  an  inexhaustible  theme  for 
merriment  of  no  very  delicate  kind. 
But  the  great  body  of  the  middle  class 
Df  Englishmen  could  not  see  the  joke. 


William  Pitt.  141 

They  warmly  praised  the  young  states- 
man for  commanding  his  passions,  and 
for  covering  his  frailties,  if  he  had  frail- 
ties, with  decorous  obscurity,  and  would 
have  been  very  far  indeed  from  think- 
ing better  of  him  if  he  had  vindicated 
himself  from  the  taunts  of  his  enemies 
by  taking  under  his  protection  a  E^ancy 
Parsons  or  a  Marianne  Clark. 

No  part  of  the  immense  popularity 
which  Pitt  long  enjoyed  is  to  be  attrib- 
uted to  the  eulogies  of  wits  and  poets. 
It  might  have  been  naturally  expected 
that  a  man  of  genius,  of  learning,  of. 
taste,  an  orator  whose  diction  was  often 
comjDared  to  that  of  Tully,  the  repre- 
sentative, too,  of  a  great  university, 
would  have  taken  a  peculiar  pleasure 
in  befriending  eminent  writers,  to  what- 
ever political  party  they  might  have 
belonged.  The  love  of  litei'ature  had 
induced  Augustus  to  heap  benefits  on 
Pompeians,  Somers  to  be  the  protector 


142  William  Pitt, 

of  nonjurors,  Harley  to  make  the  for- 
tunes of  Whigs.  But  it  could  not  move 
Pitt  to  sliow  any  favor  even  to  Pittites. 
He  was  doubtless  right  in  thinking  that, 
in  goneral,  poetry,  history,  and  philos- 
ophy ought  to  be  suffered,  like  calico 
and  cutlery,  to  find  their  proper  price 
in  the  market,  and  that  to  teach  men  of 
letters  to  look  habitually  to  the  state 
for  their  recompense,  is  bad  for  the 
state  and  bad  for  letters.  Assuredly 
nothing  can  be  more  absurd  or  mis- 
chievous than  to  waste  the  public  money 
in  bounties,  for  the  purpose  of  inducing 
people  who  ought  to  be  weighing  out 
grocery  or  measuring  out  drapery,  to 
write  bad  or  middling  books.  But, 
though  the  sound  rule  is  that  authors- 
should  be  left  to  be  remunerated  by 
their  readers,  there  will,  in  every  gene- 
ration, be  a  few  exceptions  to  this  rule. 
To  distinguish  these  special  cases  from 
the   masses,   is    an   employment   well 


William  Pitt.  143 

wortliy  of  the  faculties  of  a  great  and 
accomplished  ruler ;  and  Pitt  would 
assuredly  have  had  little  difficult}^  in 
finding  such  cases.  While  he  was  in 
power,  the  greatest  philologist  of  the 
age,  his  own  contemporary  at  Cam- 
bridge, was  reduced  to  earn  a  liveli- 
hood by  the  lowest  literary  drudgery, 
and  to  spend  in  writing  squibs  for  the 
Morning  Chronicle  years  to  which  we 
might  have  owed  an  all  but  perfect 
text  of  the  whole  tragic  and  comic 
drama  of  Athens.  The  greatest  his- 
torian of  the  age,  forced  by  poverty  to 
leave  his  country,  completed  his  im- 
mortal work  on  the  shores  of  Lake  Le- 
man.  The  political  heterodox}^  of 
Person,  and  the  religious  heterodoxy 
of  Gibbon,  may  perhaps  be  pleaded  in 
defence  of  the  minister  by  whom  those 
eminent  men  were  neglected.  But 
there  were  other  cases  in  which  no  such 
excuse  could  be  set  up.     Scarcely  had 


144  William  Pitt. 

Pitt  obtained  possession  of  unbounded 
power,  when  an  aged  writer  of  the 
highest  eminence,  who  had  made  very- 
little  by  his  writings,  and  who  was 
sinking  into  the  grave  under  a  load  of 
infirmities  and  sorrows,  wanted  five  or 
six  hundred  pounds  to  enable  him, 
during  the  winter  or  two  which  might 
still  remain  to  him,  to  draw  his  breath 
more  easily  in  the  soft  climate  of  Italy. 
[N'ot  a  farthing  was  to  be  obtained  ;  and 
before  Chi-istmas  the  author  of  the 
English  Dictionary  and  of  the  lives  of 
the  poets,  had  gasped  his  last  in  the 
river  fog  and  coal  smoke  of  Fleet  Street. 
A  few  months  after  the  death  of  John- 
son appeared  the  Task,  incomparably 
the  best  poem  that  any  Englishman 
then  living  had  produced — a  poem,  too,J 
which  could  hardly  fail  to  excite  in 
a  well-constituted  mind,  a  feeling  of 
esteem  and  compassion  for  the  poet,  a 
man  of  genius  and  virtue,  whose  means 


William  Pitt,  145 

were  scanty,  and  whom  the  most  cruel 
of  all  the  calamities  incidejit  to  hu- 
manity had  made  incapable  of  support- 
ing himself  by  vigorous  and  sustained 
exertion.  Nowhere  had  Chatham  been 
praised  with  more  enthusiasm,  or  in 
verse  more  worthy  of  the  subject,  than 
in  the  Task.  The  son  of  Chatham,  how- 
ever, contented  himself  with  reading 
and  admiring  the  book,  and  left  the 
author  to  starve.  The  pension  which, 
long  after,  enabled  poor  Cowper  to 
close  his  melancholy  life,  unmolested  by 
duns  and  bailiffs,  was  obtained  for  him 
by  the  strenuous  kindness  of  Lord 
Spencer.  "What  a  contrast  between 
the  way  in  which  Pitt  acted  towards 
Johnson,  and  the  way  in  which  Lord 
Grey  acted  towards  his  political  enemy 
Scott,  when  Scott,  worn  out  by  mis- 
fortune and  disease,  was  advised  to  try 
the  effect  of  the  Italian  air  !  What  a 
contrast  between  the  way  in  which 
10 


146  Williain  JPitf, 

Pitt  acted  towards  Cowper,  and  the 
way  in  which  Burke,  a  poor  man  and 
out  of  place,  acted  towards  Crabbe ! 
Even  Dundas,  who  made  no  preten- 
sions to  literary  taste,  and  was  content 
to  be  considered  as  a  hard-headed  and 
somewhat  coarse  man  of  business,  was, 
when  compared  with  his  eloquent  and 
classically  educated  friend,  a  Msecenas 
or  a  Leo.  Dundas  made  Burns  an  ex- 
ciseman, witli  seventy  pounds  a  year  ; 
and  tliis  was  more  tlian  Pitt,  during 
his  long  tenure  of  power,  did  for  the 
encouragement  of  letters.  Even  those 
who  may  think  that  it  is,  in  general,  no 
part  of  the  duty  of  a  government  to  re- 
ward literary  merit,  will  hardly  deny 
that  a  government,  which  has  much 
lucrative  church  preferment  in  its  gift, 
is  bound,  in  distributing  that  prefer 
ment,  not  to  overlook  divines  whose 
writings  have  rendered  great  service  to 
tlie  cause  of  religion.  But  it  seems  never 


William  Pitt.  141 

to  have  occurred  to  Pitt  that  he  lay 
under  any  such  obligation.  All  the 
theological  works  of  the  numerons  bish- 
ops whom  he  made  and  translated  are 
not,  when  put  together,  worth  fifty 
pages  of  the  Horse  Paulinse,  of  the 
Natural  Theology,  or  of  the  Views  of 
the  Evidences  of  Christianity.  But  on 
Paley  the  all-powerful  minister  never 
bestowed  the  smallest  benefice.  Artists 
Pitt  treated  as  contemptuously  as  wri- 
ters. For  painting  he  did  simply  noth- 
ing. Sculptors,  who  had  been  selected 
to  execute  monuments  voted  by  parlia- 
ment, had  to  haunt  the  ante-chambers 
of  the  treasury  during  many  years  be- 
fore they  could  obtain  a  farthing  from 
him.  One  of  them,  after  vainly  solicit- 
ing the  minister  for  payment  during 
fourteen  years,  had  the  courage  to  pre 
sent  a  memorial  to  the  King,  and  thus 
obtained  tardy  and  ungracious  justice. 
Architects  it  w^as  absolutely  necessary 


148  William  Pitt. 

to  emplo}^ ;  and  the  worst  that  could  be 
found  seemed  to  have  been  employed. 
Not  a  single  fine  public  building  of  any 
kind  or  in  any  style  was  erected  during 
his  long  administration.  It  may  be 
confidently  affirmed  that  no  ruler  whose 
abilities  and  attainments  would  bear 
any  comparison  with  his  has  ever  shown 
such  cold  disdain  for  what  is  excellent 
in  arts  and  letters.  ^ 
X  His  first  administration  lasted  seven- 
teen years.  That  long  period  is  divided 
by  a  strongly  marked  line  into  two  al- 
most exactly  equal  parts.  The  first 
part  ended  and  the  second  began  in  the 
autumn  of  1792.  Throughout  both 
parts  Pitt  displayed  in  the  highest  de- 
gree the  talents  of  a  parliamentary 
leader.  During  the  first  part  he  was  a 
fortunate,  and,  in  many  respects,  a  skil- 
ful administrator.  With  the  difficulties 
which  he  had  to  encounter  during  the 
second  part  he  was  altogether  incapable 


William  Pitt,  149 

of  contending  :  but  liis  eloquence  and .  ^ 
his  perfect  mastery  of  the  tactics  of  the*^^ 
House  of  Commons  cojicealed  his  in- 
capacity from  the  multitude. 

The  eight  years  which  followed  the  - 
general  election  of  1784  were  as  tran- 
quil and  prosperous  as  any  eight  year& 
in  the  whole  history  of  England. 
Neighboring  nations  which  had  lately 
been  in  arms  against  her,  and  which 
had  flattered  themselves  that,  in  losing 
her  American  colonies,  slie  had  lost  a 
chief  source  of  her  wealth  and  of  her 
power,  saw,  with  wonder  and  vexation, 
that  she  was  more  wealthy  and  more 
powerful  than  ever.  Her  trade  in- 
creased. Her  manufactures  flourished. 
Her  exchequer  was  full  to  overflowing. 
Yery  idle  apprehensions  were  generally 
entertained  that  the  public  debt,  though 
much  less  than  a  third  of  the  debt 
which  we  now  bear  w^ith  ease,  would 
be  found  too  heavy  for  the  strength  of 


150  William  Pitt. 

the  nation.  Those  apprehensions  might 
not  perhaps  have  been  easily  quieted 
bY^-eason.     But  Pitt  quieted  them  by 
'^juggle.    He  succeeded  in  persuading 
first  himself,  and  then  the  whole  nation,^ 
his  opponents  included,  that  a  new  sink- 
ing fund,  which,  so  far  as  it  differed 
from  former  sinking  funds,  differed  for 
the  worst,  would,  by  virtue  of  some  mys- 
terious power  of  propagation  belonging 
/     to  money,  put  into  the  pocket  of  the 
public  creditor  great  sums  not  taken  out 
of  the  pocket  of  the  tax-payer.     The 
-country,  terrified  by  a   danger  which 
was  no  danger,  hailed  with  delight  and 
boundless  confidence  a  remedy  which 
was  no  remedy.     The  minister  was  al- 
most universally  extolled  as  the  great- 
est of  financiers.     Meanwhile  both  the 
branches  of  the  House  of  Bourbon  found 
that  England  was  as  formidable  an  an- 
^i^fcagonist  as  she  had  ever  been.     France 
\    had  formed  a  plan  for  reducing  Holland 


William  Pitt.  151 

to  vassalage.  But  England  interposed, 
and  France  receded.  Spain  interrupted 
by  violence  the  trade  of  our  merchants 
with  the  regions  near  the  Oregon.  But 
England  armed,  and  Spain  receded. 
Within  the  island  there  was  profound 
tranquillity.  The  King  was,  for  the 
first  time,  popular.  During  the  twenty- 
three  years  which  had  followed  his  ac- 
cession he  had  not  been  loved  by  his 
subjects.  His  domestic  virtues  were 
acknowledged.  But  it  was  generally 
thought  that  the  good  qualities  by 
which  he  was  distinguished  in  private 
life  were  wanting  to  his  political  char- 
acter. As  a  sovereign,  he  was  resent- 
ful, unforgiving,  stubborn,  cunning. 
Under  his  rule  the  country  had  sus- 
tained cruel  disgraces  and  disasters ; 
and  every  one  of  those  disgraces  and 
disasters  was  imputed  to  his  strong  an- 
tipathies, and  to  his  perverse  obstinacy 
in  the  wrong.     One  statesman  after  an- 


152  William  Pitt. 

other  complained  that  he  had  been  in- 
duced by  royal  caresses,  entreaties,  and 
promises,  to  undertake  the  direction  of 
affairs  at  a  difficult  conjuncture,  and 
that,  as  soon  as  he.  had,  not  without  sul- 
lying his  fame  and  alienating  his  best 
friends,  served  the  turn  for  which  he 
was  wanted,  his  ungrateful  master  be- 
gan to  intrigue  against  him,  and  to  can- 
vass against  him.  Grenville,  Rocking- 
ham, Chatham,  men  of  widelj^  differ- 
ent characters,  but  all  three  upright 
and  high-spirited,  agreed  in  thinking 
that  the  Prince  under  whom  they  had 
successively  held  the  highest  place  in 
the  government,  was  one  of  the  most 
insincere  of  mankind.  His  confidence 
was  rej)osed,  they  said,  not  in  those 
known  and  responsible  counsellors  to 
whom  he  had  delivered  the  seals  of 
office,  but  in  secret  advisers  who  stole 
up  the  back  stairs  into  his  closet.  In 
parliament,  his  ministers,  while  defend- 


William  Pitt.  163 

ing  tliemselves  against  the  attacks  of 
the  opposition  in  front,  were  perpetu- 
ally, at  his  instigation,  assailed  on  the 
flank  or  in  the  rear  by  a  vile  band  of 
mercenaries  who  called  themselves  his 
friends.  These  men  constantly,  while 
in  possession  of  lucrative  places  in  his 
service,  spoke  and  voted  against  bills 
which  he  had  authorized  the  first  lord 
of  the  treasury  or  the  secretary  of  state 
to  bring  in.  But  from  the  day  in 
which  Pitt  was  placed  at  the  head  of 
affairs  there  was  an  end  of  secret  influ- 
ence. His  haughty  and  aspiring  spirit 
was  not  to  be  satisfied  with  the  mere 
show  of  power.  Any  attempt  to  un- 
dermine him  at  court,  any  mutinous 
movement  among  his  followers  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  was  certain  to  be 
at  once  put  down.  He  had  only  to 
tender  his  resignation ;  and  he  could 
•dictate  his  own  terms.  For  he,  and  he 
alone,  stood  between  the  King  and  the 


154  William  Pitt. 

coalition.  He  was  therefore  little  lesa 
than  mayor  of  the  palace.  The  nation 
loudly  applauded  the  King  for  having 
the  wisdom  to  repose  entire  confidence 
in  so  excellent  a  minister.  His  Majes- 
ty's private  virtues  now  began  to  pro- 
duce their  full  effect.  He  was  general- 
ly regarded  as  tlie  model  of  a  respect- 
able country  gentleman,  honest,  good- 
natured,  sober,  religious.  He  rose 
early:  he  dined  temperately:  he  was 
strictly  faithful  to  his  wife  :  he  never 
missed  church  :  and  at  church  he  never 
missed  a  response.  His  people  heartily 
prayed  tliat  he  might  long  reign  over 
them  ;  and  they  prayed  the  more  heart- 
ily, because  his  virtues  were  set  off  to 
the  best  advantage '  by  the  vices  and 
follies  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  who 
lived  in  close  intimacy  with  the  chiefs 
of  the  opposition.  ^ 

How  strong  this  feeling  was  in  the 
public    mind,    appeared     signally   on 


William  Pitt.  155 

one  great  occasion.  In  the  autumn  of 
1788  the  King  became  insane.  The 
opposition,  eager  for  office,  committed 
the  great  indiscretion  of  asserting  that 
the  heir  apparent  had,  by  the  fiincla-/X^ 
mental  laws  of  England,  a  right  to  be 
Kegent  with  the  full  powers  of  royalty.  ' 
Pitt,  on  the  other  hand,  maintained  it 
to  be  the  constituti'onal  doctrine  that, 
when  a  sovereign  is,  by  reason  of  in- 
fancy, disease,  or  absence,  incapable  of 
exercising  the  regal  functions,  it  be- 
longs to  the  estates  of  the  realm  to  de- 
termine who  shall.be  the  vicegerent, 
and  with  what  portion  of  the  executive 
authority  such  vicegerent  shall  be  in- 
trusted. A  long  and  violent  contest  fol- 
(owed,  in  which  Pitt  was  supported  by 
the  great  body  of  the  people  with  as 
much  enthusiasm  as  during  the  first 
months  of  his  administration.  Tories 
with  one  voice  applauded  him  for  de- 
Cendino^  the  sick-bed  of  a  virtuous  and 


156  William  Pitt, 

unhappy  sovereign  against  a  disloyal 
faction  and  an  nndutiful  son.  ]^ot  a 
few  Whigs  applauded  him  for  assert- 
ing the  authorit}^  of  parliaments  and 
the  principles  of  the  revolution,  in  op- 
position to  a  doctrine  which  seemed  to 
have  too  much  affinity  with  the  ser- 
vile theory  of  indefeasiblt;  hereditary 
right.  The  middle  class,  always  zeal- 
ous on  the  side  of  decency  and  the  do- 
mestic virtues,  looked  forward  with 
dismay  to  a  reign  resembling  that  of 
Charles  II.  The  palace,  which  had  now 
been,  during  thirty  years,  the  pattern 
of  an  English  home,  would  be  a  public 
nuisance,  a  school  of  profligacy.  To 
the  good  King's  repast  of  mutton  and 
lemonade,  despatched  at  three  o'clock, 
would  succeed  midnight  banquets, 
from  which  the  guests  would  be  carried 
home  speechless.  To  the  backgammon 
board  at  which  the  good  King  played 
for   a  little   silver  with  his  equerries. 


I 


JFilUam  Pitt,  157 

would  succeed  faro  tables,  from  which 
youug  patricians  who  had  sat  down 
rich  would  rise  up  beggars.  The  draw- 
ing-room, from  which  the  frown  of  the 
Queen  had  repelled  a  whole  generation 
of  frail  beauties,  would  now  be  again 
what  it  had  been  in  the  days  of  Barbara 
Palmer  andXouisa  de  Querouaile.  Nay, 
severely  as  the  public  reprobated  the 
Prince's  many  illicit  attachments,  his 
one  virtuous  attachment  was  reprobate 
ed  more  severely  still.  Even  in  grave 
and  pious  circles  his  Protestant  mis- 
tresses gave  less  scandal  than  his  Po- 
pish wife.  That  he  must  be  Pegent 
nobody  ventured  to  deny.  But  he  and 
his  friends  were  so  unpopular  that  Pitt 
could,  with  general  approbation,  pro- 
pose to  limit  the  powers  of  the  Pegent 
by  restrictions  to  which  it  would  have 
^een  impossible  to  subject  a  prince 
beloved  and  trusted  by  the  country. 
Some  interested  men,  fully  expecting  a 


158  William  Pitt. 

change  of  administration,  went  over  to 
the  opposition.  But  the  majority,  pu- 
rified by  these  desertions,  closed  its 
ranks,  and  presented  a  more  firm  array 
than  ever  to  the  enemy.  In  every  di- 
vision Pitt  was  victorious.  When  at 
lengtli,  after  a  stormy  interregnum  of 
three  months,  it  was  announced,  on  the 
very  eve  of  the  inauguration  of  the 
Regent,  tliat  the  King  was  himself 
again,  the  nation  was  wild  with  delight. 
On  the  evening  of  the  day  on  which 
his  Majesty  resumed  his  functions,  a 
spontaneous  illumination,  the  most  ge- 
neral that  had  ever  been  seen  in  Eng- 
land, brightened  the  whole  vast  space 
from  Ilighgate  to  Tooting,  and  from 
Hammersmith  to  Greenwich.  On  the 
day  on  which  he  returned  tlianks  in  the 
cathedral  of  his  capital,  all  the  horses 
and  carriages  witliin  a  hundred  miles 
of  London  were  too  few  for  the  multi- 
tudes which  flocked  to  see  him  pass 
11 


William  Pitt.  159 

throno^li  the  streets.  A  second  illumi- 
nation  followed,  which  was  even  supe- 
rior to  the  first  in  magnificence.  Pitt 
with  diflicnlty  escaped  from  the  tnmnlt- 
nons  kindness  of  an  innumerable  mul- 
titude, which  insisted  ou  drawing  his 
coach  from  St.  Paul's  churchyard  to 
Downino^  Street.  This  was  the  moment 
at  which  his  fame  and  fortune  may  be 
said  to  hjjve  reached  the  zenith.  His 
influence  in  the  closet  was  as  great  as 
that  of  Carr  or  Yilliers  had  been.  His 
dominion  over  the  parliament  was  more 
absolute  than  that  of  Walpole  or  Pel- 
ham  had  been.  He  was  at  the  same 
time  as  high  in  the  favor  of  tlie  popu- 
lace as  ever  Wilkes  or  Sacheverell  had 
been.  Nothing  did  more  to  raise  his 
character  than  his  noble  poverty.  It 
was  well  known  that,  if  he  had  been 
dismissed  from  oifice  after  more  than 
Sve  years  of  boundless  power,  he  would 
hardly  have  carried  out  with  him  a  sum 


V 


160  William  Pitt. 

Biifficient  to  furnish  the  set  of  chambers 
in  which,  he  cheerfully  declared,  he 
meant  to  resume  the  practice  of  the 
law.  His  admirers,  however,  were  by 
no  means  disposed  to  suffer  him  to  de- 
pend on  daily  toil  for  his  daily  bread. 
The  voluntary  contributions  which 
were  awaiting  his  acceptance  in  the 
city  of  London  alone  would  have  suf- 
ficed to  make  him  a  rich  man.  But  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  his  haughty 
spirit  would  have  stooped  to  accept  a 
provision  so  honorably  earned  and  so 
honorably  bestowed. 
y^  To  such  a  height  of  power  and  glory 
had  this  extraordinary  man  risen  at 
twenty-nine  years  of  age.  Aud  now 
the  tide  was  on  the  turn.  Only  ten 
days  after  the  triumphant  procession  to 
Bt.Paul's,  the  States-General  of  France, 
after  an  interval  of  a  hundred  and  sev- 
enty-four years,  met  at  Versailles. 
The  nature  of  the  great  Revolution 


William  Pitt.  161/. 

wliicli  followed  was  long  very  imper- 
fectly understood  in  this  conntiy.  Bnrke 
saw  much  further  than  any  of  his  con- 
.temporaries  ;  but  whatever  his  sagacity 
descried  was  refracted  and  discolored 
by  his  passions  and  his  imagination. 
More  than  three  years  elapsed  before 
the  principles  of  the  English  adminis- 
tration underwent  any  material  change. 
[N'othing  could  as  yet  be  milder  or 
more  strictly  constitutional  than  the 
minister's  domestic  j)olicy.  'Not  a  sin- 
gle act  indicating  an  arbitrary  temper 
or  a  jealousy  of  the  people  could  be  im- 
puted to  him.  He  had  never  applied 
to  parliament  for  any  extraordinary 
powers.  He  had  never  used  with 
harshness  the  ordinary  powers  intrust- 
ed by  the  constitution  to  the  executive 
government.  Not  a  single  state  prose- 
cution which  would  even  now  be  called 
oppressive  had  been  instituted  by  him. 
Indeed,  the  only  oppressive  state  prose- 


162  William  Pitt. 

ciition  instituted  durina:  the  first  eiorlit 
years  of  his  administration  was  that  of 
Stockdale,  which  is  to  be  attributed, 
not  to  the  government,  but  to  the  chiefs 
of  the  opposition.  In  office,  Pitt  had 
redeemed  the  pledges  which  he  had,  at 
his  entrance  into  public  life,  given  to 
the  supporters  of  parliamentary  reform. 
He  had,  in  1785,  brought  forward  a  ju- 
dicious plan  for  the  improvement  of 
the  rej^resentative  system,  and  had  pre- 
vailed on  the  King,  not  only  to  refrain 
from  talking  against  that  plan,  but  to 
recommend  it  to  the  houses  in  a  speech 
from  the  throne/  This  attempt  failed  : 
but  there  can  be  little  doubt  that,  if 
the  French  Revolution  had  not  pro- 
duced a  violent  reaction  of  public  feel- 
ing, Pitt  would  have  performed,  with 

J  The  speech  with  which  the  King  opened  the  session  of 
i7S5  concluded  with  an  assurance,  that  Uis  Majesty  would 
oeartily  concur  in  every  measure  which  could  tend  to  se- 
lure  the  true  principles  of  the  constitution.  These  words 
fc'cre  at  the  time  understood  to  refer  to  Pitt's  Eeform  Bill. 


William  Pitt.  163 

little  difficulty  and  no  danger,  that 
great  work  which,  at  a  later  period, 
Lord  Grej  could  accomplish  only  by 
means  which  for  a  time  loosened  the 
very  foundations  of  the  commonwealth. 
When  the  atrocities  of  the  slave  trade 
were  first  brought  under  <'he  considera- 
tion of  parliament,  no  abolitionist  was 
more  zealous  than  Pitt.  When  sick- 
ness prevented  Wilberforce  from  ap- 
pearing in  public,  his  place  was  most 
efficiently  supplied  by  his  friend  the 
minister.  A  humane  bill,  wliich  miti- 
gated the  horroi'S  of  the  middle  passage, 
was,  in  1788,  carried  by  the  eloquence 
and  determined  spirit  of  Pitt,  in  spite 
of  the  opposition  of  some  of  his  own 
colleagues  ;  and  it  ought  always  to  be 
remembered  to  his  honor  that,  in  order 
to  carry  that  bill,  he  kept  the  houses  sit- 
ting,'in  spite  of  man}'  murmurs,  long 
after  tlie  business  of  the  gov^ernment 
had  been  done,  and  the  appropriation 


164  William  Pitt, 

act  passed.     In  1791  he  cordially  con- 
ciiiTed  with   Fox   in   maintaining   the 
sound  constitutional  doctrine,  that  an 
impeachment  is  not  terminated   by  a 
dissolution.     In  the  course  of  the  same 
year  the  two   great   rivals    contended 
side  by  side  in  a  far  more  important 
cause.     They  are  fairly  entitled  to  di- 
vide the  high  honor  of  having  added  to 
our  statute-book   the  inestimable   law 
which  places  the  liberty  of  the  press 
under  the  protection  of  juries.    On  one 
occasion,  and  one   alone,  Pitt,  during 
the  first  half  of  his  long  administration, 
.  s^ed  in  a  manner  unworthy  of  an  en- 
lightened Whis:.     In  the  debate  on  the 
test  act,  he  stooped  to  gratify  the  mas- 
ter  whom   he   served,   the   university 
which  he  represented,  and    the  great 
body   of  clergymen  and  country  gen- 
tlemen on  whose  support  he  rested,  by 
talking,  with  little  heartiness,  indeed, 
and  with  no  asperity,  the  language  of  a 


William  Pitt.  165 

Tory.  With  this  single  exception,  his 
conduct  from  the  end  of  1783  to  the 
middle  of  1792  was  that  of  an  honest 
friend  of  civil  and  religions  liberty. 

Nor  did  any  thing,  during  that  pe- 
riod, indicate  that  he  loved  war,  or 
harbored  any  malevolent  feeling  against 
any  neigliboring  nation.  Those  French 
writers  who  have  represented  him  as  a 
Hannibal  sworn  in  childhood  by  his 
father  to  bear  eternal  hatred  to  France, 
as  having,  by  mysterions  intrigues  and 
lavish  bribes,  instigated  the  leading 
Jacobins  to  commit  those  excesses 
which  dishonoiied  the  Revolution,  as 
having  been  tlie  real  author  of  the  first 
coalition,  know  nothing  of  liis  charac- 
ter or  of  his  history.  So  far  was  he 
from  being  a  deadly  enemy  to  France, 
that  his  laudable  attempts  to  bring 
about  a  closer  connection  witli  that 
country  by  means  of  a  wise  and  liberal 
treaty  of  commerce,  brought  on  him  the 


166  William  Pitt. 

severe  censure  of  the  opposition.  He 
was  told  in  the  House  of  Commons 
tliat  he  was  a  degenerate  son,  and  that 
his  partiality  for  the  herijditarj  foes  of 
our  island  was  enough  to  make  his 
great  fatlier's  bones  stir  under  tlie 
pavement  of  the  Abbey. 

And  this  man,  whose  name,  if  he 
lad  been  so  fortunate  as  to  die  in  1792, 
would  now  liave  been  associated  with 
peace,  with  freedom,  with  pliihinthropy, 
with  temperate  reform,  with  mild  and 
constitutional  administration,  lived  to 
associate  liis  name  witli  arbitrary  gov- 
ernment, with  harsh  laws  liarshly  exe- 
cuted, with  alien  bills,  with  gagging 
bills,  with  suspensions  of  the  habeas 
corpus  act,  with  cruel  punishments 
inflicted  on  some  political  agitators, 
with  unjustifiable  prosecutions  insti- 
tuted against  others,  and  with  the  most 
costly  and  most  sanguinary  wars  of 
modern  times.    He  lived  to  be  held  up 


I 


William  Pitt,  167 

to  obloquy  as  the  stern  oppressor  of 
England,  and  tlie  indefatigable  dis- 
turber of  Europe.  Poets,  contrasting 
his  earlier  with  his  later  years,  likened 
him  sometimes  to  the  apostle  who 
kissed  in  order  to  betray,  and  some- 
times to  the  evil  angels  \Yho  kept  not 
their  first  estate.  A  satirist  of  great 
genius  introduced  the  fiends  of  Famine, 
Slaughter,  and  Fire,  proclaiming  that 
they  had  received  their  commission 
from  One  whose  name  was  formed  of 
four  letters,  and  promising  to  give  their 
employer  ample  proofs  of  gratitude. 
Famine  would  gnaw  the  muUitude  till 
they  should  rise  up  against  him  in 
madness.  The  demon  of  Slaughter 
would  impel  them  to  tear  him  from 
limb  to  limb.  But  Fire  boasted  that 
ehe  alone  could  reward  him  as  he  de- 
served, and  that  she  would  cling  round 
Uim  to  all  eternity.  By  the  French 
press   and   the  French  tribune   every 


]68  William  Pitt, 

crime  that  disgraced  and  every  calam- 
ity that  afflicted  France  was  ascribed 
to  the  monster  Pitt  and  his  guineas. 
While  the  Jacobins  were  dominant,  it 
was  he  who  h^d  corrupted  the  Gironde, 
who  had  raised  Lyons  and  Bordeaux 
against  the  convention,  who  had  sub- 
orned Paris  to  assassinate  Lepelletier, 
and  Cecilia  Pegnault  to  assasinate 
Robespierre.  When  the  Thermidorian 
reaction  came,  all  the  atrocities  of  the 
Reign  of  Terror  wei*e  imputed  to  him. 
Collot  D'Herbois  and  Fouquier  Thin- 
ville  bad  been  his  pensioners.  It  was 
he  who  had  hired  the  murderers  of  Sep- 
tember, who  had  dictated  the  pamphlets 
of  Marat  and  the  Carmagnoles  of  Bar- jj 
rere,  who  had  paid  Lebon  to  deluge 
Arras  with  blood,  and  Carrier  to  choke 
the  Loire  w^ith  corpses, 
r-  The  trutli  is,  that  he  liked  neither 
war  nor  arbitrary  government.  He 
jvvas   a  lover   of  peace   and   freedom, 


William  Pitt.  169 

driven,  by  a  stress  agai^ist  wliicli  it  was 
hardly  possible  for  any  will  or  any  in- 
tellect to  struggle,  out  of  the  course  to 
which  his  inclinations  pointed,  and  for 
which  his  abilities  and  acquirements 
fitted  him,  and  forced  into  a  policy  re- 
pugnant to  his  feelings  and  unsuited  to 
his  talents. 

The  charge  of  apostasy  is  grossly  un- 
just. A  man  ought  no  more  to  be  called 
an  apostate  because  his  opinions  alter 
with  the  opinions  of  the  great  body  of 
his  contemporaries,  than  he  ought  to  be 
called  an  oriental  traveller  because  he 
is  always  going  round  from  west  to 
east  with  the  globe  and  every  thing 
that  is  upon  it.  Between  the  spring  of 
1789  and  the  close  of  1792,  the  public 
mind  of  England  underwent  a  great 
change.  If  the  change  of  Pitt's  senti- 
ments attracted  peculiar  notice,  it  was 
not  because  he  changed  more  than  his 
neighbors ;  for  in  fact  he  changed  less 


170  JFilliam  Pitt, 

than  most  of  them;  but  because  his 
position  was  far  more  conspicuous  than 
theirs,  because  he  was,  till  Bonaparte 
appeared,  the  individual  who  filled  the 
greatest  sj^ace  in  the  eyes  of  the  inhab- 
itants of  the  civilized  world.  During 
a  short  time  the  nation,  and  Pitt,  as 
one  of  the  nation,  looked  with  interest 
and  approbation  on  the  French  Revo- 
lution. But  soon  vast  confiscations, 
the  violent  sweeping  awaj^  of  ancient 
institutions,  the  domination  of  clubs, 
the  barbarities  of  mobs  maddened  by 
famine  and  hatred,  produced  a  reaction 
here.  The  court,  the  nobility,  the  gen- 
try, the  clergy,  the  manufacturers,  the 
merchants ;  in  short,  nineteen-twen- 
tieths  of  those  who  had  good  roofs 
over  their  heads  and  good  coats  on  their 
backs,  became  eager  and  intolerant 
Antijacobins.  This  feeling  was  at  least 
as  strong  among  the  minister's  adversa- 
ries as  among  his  supporters.     Fox  in 


William  Pitt,  171 

v^ain  attempted  to  restrain  Lis  follow- 
ers. All  his  genius,  all  his  vast  per^ 
Bonal  influence,  could  not  prevent  them 
from  rising  up  against  him  in  general 
mutiny.  Burke  set  the  example  of  re- 
volt ;  and  Burke  was  in  no  long  time 
joined  by  Portland,  Spencer,  Fitzwil- 
liam,  Loughborough,  Carlisle,  Malmes- 
bury,  Windham,  Elliot.  In  the  House 
of  Commons,  the  followers  of  the  great 
Whig  statesman  and  orator  diminished 
from  about  a  hundred  and  sixty  to 
fifty.  In  the  Plouse  of  Lords  he  had 
but  ten  or  twelve  adherents  left.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  there  would  have 
been  a  similar  mutiny  on  the  ministe- 
rial benches,  if  Pitt  had  obstinately  re- 
^sisted  the  general  wish.  Pressed  at 
once  by  his  master  and  Toy  his  col- 
leagues, by  old  friends,  and  by  old  op- 
ponents, he  abandoned,  slowly  and  re- 
luctantly, the  policy  which  was  dear 
to  his  heart.    He  labored  hard  to  avert 


172  William  Pitt. 

the  European  war.  "When  the  Eu- 
ropean war  broke  out,  he  still  flattered 
himself  that  it  would  not  be  necessary 
for  this  country  to  take  either  side.  In 
the  spring  of  1792,  he  congratulated 
parliament  on  the  prospect  of  long  and 
profound  peace,  and  proved  his  sin- 
cerity by  proposing  large  remissions  of 
taxation.  Down  to  the  end  of  that 
year  he  continued  to  cherish  the  hope 
that  England  might  be  able  to  preserve 
neutrality.  But  the  passions  which 
raged  on  both  sides  of  the  Channel 
were  not  to  be  restrained.  The  repub- 
licans who  ruled  France  were  inflamed 
by  a  fanaticism  resembling  that  of  the 
Mussulmans,  who,  with  the  Koran  in 
one  hand  and  the  sword  in  the  other, 
went  forth,  conquering  and  converting, 
eastward  to  the  Bay  of  Bengal,  and 
westward  to  the  Pillars  of  Hercules 
The  higher  and  middle  classes  of  Eng- 
land were  animated  bv  a  zeal  not  less 


William  Pitt.  173 

fiery  than  that  of  tlie  Crnsaclers  who 
raised  the  cry  of  Deus  vult  at  Cler- 
mont.  The  impulse  which  drove  the 
two  nations  to  a  collision  was  not  to  be 
arrested  by  the  abilities  or  by  the  au- 
thority of  an}^  single  man.  As  Piti 
was  in  front  of  his  fellows,  and  towered 
high  above  them,  he  seemed  to  lead 
them.  But  in  fact  he  was  violently 
pushed  on  by  them,  and,  had  he  held 
back  but  a  little  more  than  he  did, 
would  have  been  thrust  out  of  their 
way  or  trampled  under  their  feet. 
He  yielded  to  the  current :  and  from 
^  that  day  his  misfortunes  began.  The 
trulli  is,  that  there  were  only  two  con- 
sistent courses  before  him.  Since  he  did 
not  choose  to  oppose  himself,  side  by 
side  with  Fox,  to  the  public  feeling,  he 
should  have  taken  the  advice  of  Burke, 
and  should  have  availed  hiniself  of  that 
feeling  to  the  full  extent.  If  it  was 
impossible  to  preserve  peace,  he  should 


1V4  William  Pitt. 

have  adopted  the  only  policy  which 
could  lead  to  victory.  He  should  have 
proclaimed  a  Hol}^  War  for  religion,  mo- 
rality, property,  order,  public  law,  and 
should  have  thus  opposed  to  the  Jacob- 
.  ins  an  energy  equal  to  their  own.  Un- 
happily he  tried  to  find  a  middle  path ; 
and  he  found  one  which  united  all  that 
was  worst  in  both  extremes.  He  w^ent  to 
war:  but  he  would  not  understand  the 
peculiar  character  of  that  war.  He 
was  obstinately  blind  to  the  plain  fact, 
that  he  was  contending  against  a  state 
which  was  also  a  sect ;  and  that  the 
new  quarrel  between  England  and 
France,  was  of  quite  a  different  kind 
from  the  old  quarrels  about  colonies  in, 
America  and  fortresses  in  the  Nether- 
lands. He  had  to  combat  frantic  en- 
thusiasm, boundless  ambition,  restless 
i)^tivity,  the  wildest  and  most  audacious 
j  y^pirit  of  innovation;  and  he  acted  as  if 
y  \\Q  had  to   deal  with  the  harlots  and 


William  Pitt.  175 

fops  of  the  old  court  at  Yersailles,  with 
Madame  de  Pompadour  and  the  Abbe 
de  Beriiis.  It  was  j^itiable  to  hear 
him,  year  after  year,  proving  to  an  ad- 
miring audience  that  the  wicked  re- 
public was  exhausted,  that  she  could 
not  hold  out,  that  her  credit  was  gone, 
that  her  assignats  were  not  worth 
more  than  the  paper  of  which  they 
were  made  ;  as  if  credit  was  necessary 
to  a  government  of  which  the  princi- 
ple was  rapine,  as  if  Alboin  could  not 
turn  Italy  into  a  desert  till  he  had  ne- 
gotiated a  loan  at  five  per  cent.,  as  if 
tha  exchequer  bills  of  Attila  had  been 
at  par.  It  was  impossible  that  a  man 
who  so  completely  mistook  the  nature 
of  a  contest  could  cany  on  that  contest 
successfully.  Great  as  Pitt's  abilities  , 
were,  his  military  administration  was 
that  of  a  driveller.  He  was  at  the 
liead  of  a  nation  ensras^ed  in  a  striio^o-le 
for  life  and  death,  of  a  nation  eminently 


176  William  Pitt, 

distinguished  by  all  the  physical  and 
all  the  moral  qualities  which  make  ex- 
cellent soldiers.  The  resources  at  his 
command  were  unlimited.  The  par- 
liament was  even  more  ready  to  grant 
him  men  and  money  than  he  was  to 
ask  for  them.  In  such  an  emergency, 
and  with  such  means,  such  a  statesman 
as  E-ichelieu,  as  Louvois,  as  Chatham, 
as  Wellesley,  would  have  created  in  a 
few  months  one  of  the  finest  armies  in 
the  world,  and  would  soon  have  dis- 
covered and  brought  forward  generals 
worthy  to  command  such  an  army. 
Germany  might  have  been  saved  by 
another  Blenheim  ;  Flanders  recovered 
by  another  Eamilies ;  another  Poitiers 
might  have  delivered  the  Koyalist  and. 
Catholic  provinces  of  France  from  a 
yoke  which  they  abhorred,  and  might 
have  spread  terror  even  to  the  barriers 
of  Paris.  But  the  fact  is,  that,  after 
eight  years  of  war,  after  a  vast  destruc- 


William  Fitt.  Ill 

tion  of  life,  after  an  exj^enditure  of 
wealth  far  exceeding  the  expenditure 
of  the  American  war,  of  the  Seven 
Years'  War,  of  the  war  of  the  Anstrian 
.Succession,  and  of  the  war  of  the 
/  Spanish  Succession  united,  the  English 
/army,  imder  Pitt,  was  the  laughing- 
stock of  all  Europe.  It  could  not  boast 
of  one  single  brilliant  exploit.  It  had 
never  shown  itself  on  the  continent  but 
to  be  beaten,  chased,  forced  to  re-em- 
bark, or  forced  to  capitulate.  To  take 
some  sugar  island  in  the  West  Indies, 
to  scatter  some  mob  of  half  naked  Irish 
peasants,  such  were  the  most  splendid 
victories  won  by  the  British  troops  un- 
der Pitt's  auspices. 

The  English  navy  no  mismanage- 
ment could  ruin.  But  during  a  long 
period  whatever  mismanagement  could 
do  was  done.  The  Earl  of  Chatham, 
without  a  single  qualification  for  high 
public  trust,  w^as  made,  by  fraternal 
12 


iVS  William  Pitt, 

partiality,  first  lord  of  the  admiralty, 
and  was  kept  in  that  great  post  during 
two  years  of  a  war  in  w^hich  the  very 
existence  of  the  state  depended  on  the 
efficiency  of  the  fleet.  He  continued 
to  doze  away  and  trifle  away  the  time 
which  ought  to  have  been  devoted  to 
the  public  service,  till  the  whole  mer- 
cantile body,  though  generally  disposed 
to  support  the  government,  complained 
bitterly  that  our  flag  gave  no  protec- 
tion to  our  trade.  Fortunately  he  was 
succeeded  by  Geoi-ge  Earl  Spencer, 
one  of  those  chiefs  of  the  Whig  party 
who,  in  the  great  schism  caused  by  the 
French  Revolution,  luid  tbllow^ed  Burke. 
Lord  Spencer,  though  inferior  to  many 
of  his  colleagues  as  an  orator,  was  de- 
cidedly the  best  administrator  among 
them.  To  him  it  was  owino;  that  a  lonoj 
and  gloomy  succession  of  days  of  fast- 
ing, and,  most  emphatically,  of  humil- 
iation,  was  interrupted,  twice  in   tho 


William  Pitt,  -  179 

short  space  of  eleven  months,  by  days 
of  thanksgiving  for  great  victories. 

It  may  seem  paradoxical  to  say  that 
the  incapacity  which  Pitt  showed  in  all 
that  related  to  the  conduct  of  the  war 
isj  in  some  sense,  the  most  decisive 
proof  that  he  was  a  man  of  very  ex- 
traordinary abilities.  Yet  this  is  the 
simple  truth.  For  assuredly  one-tenth 
part  of  his  errors  and  disasters  would 
have  been  fatal  to  the  power  and  influ- 
ence of  any  minister  who  had  not  pos- 
sessed, in  the  highest  degree,  the  tal- 
ents of  a  parliamentary  leader.  While 
his  schemes  were  confounded,  while  his 
predictions  were  falsified,  while  the 
coalitions  which  he  had  labored  to  form 
were  falling  to  pieces,  while  the  expe- 
ditions which  he  had  sent  forth  at  enor- 
mous cost  were  ending  in  rout  and  dis- 
grace, while  the  enemy  against  whom 
he  was  feebly  contending  was  subju- 
gating Flanders  and  Brabant,  the  elec- 


180  William  Pitt, 

borate  of  Mentz  and  the  electorate  of 
Treves,  Holland,  Piedmont,  Ligiiria, 
Lombardy,  his  authorit}^  over  the  House 
of  Commons  was  constantly  becoming 
more  and  more  absolute.  There  was 
his  empire.  Tliere  were  his  victories, 
his  Lodi  and  his  Areola,  his  Rivoli  and 
his  Marengo.  If  some  great  misfortune, 
a  pitched  battle  lost  by  the  allies,  the 
annexation  of  a  new  department  to  the 
French  republic,  a  sanguinary  insur- 
rection in  Ireland,  a  mutiny  in  the  fleet, 
a  panic  in  the  city,  a  run  on  the  bank, 
had  spread  dismay  through  the  ranks 
of  his  majority,  that  dismay  lasted  only 
till  he  rose  from  the  treasur}^  bench, 
drew  up  his  haughty  head,  stretched 
his  arm  with  commanding  gesture,  and 
poured  forth,  in  deep  and  sonorous 
tones,  the  lofty  language  of  inextin- 
guishable hope  and  inflexible  resolu- 
tion. Thus,  through  a  long  and  calam- 
Aous  period,  every  disaster  that  hap- 


Willicun  Pitt.  181 

pened  without  the  walls  of  parlia- 
ment was  regularly  followed  by  a  tri 
umph  within  tliem.  At  length  he  had 
no  longer  an  opposition  to  encounter. 
Of  the  great  party  wJiich  had  contend- 
ed against  him  during  the  first  eight 
years  of  his  administration,  more  than 
one  half  now  marched  under  his  stand- 
ard, with  his  old  competitor  the  Duke 
of  Portland  at  their  head ;  and  the  rest 
had,  after  many  vain  struggles,  quitted 
the  field  in  despair.  Fox  had  retired 
to  the  shades  of  St.  Anne's  Hill,  and 
had  there  found,  in  the  society  of 
friends  whom  no  vicissitude  could  es- 
trange from  him,  of  a  woman  whom  he 
tenderly  loved,  and  of  the  illustrious 
dead  of  Athens,  of  Rome,  and  of  Flor- 
ence, ample  compensation  for  all  the 
misfortunes  of  his  public  life.  Session 
followed  session  with  scarcely  a  single 
division.  In  the  eventful  year  1799, 
the    largest    minority   that    could   be 


182  William  Pitt. 

mustered  against  the  government  was 
twenty -five. 

In  Pitt's  domestic  policy  there  was 
at  this  time  assuredly  no  want  of  vigor. 
While  lie  offered  to  Frencli  Jacobinism 
a  resistance  so  feeble  that  it  only  en- 
courao-ed  the  evil  wlilch  he  wished  to 
suppress,  lie  put  down  English  Jaco- 
binism with  a  strong  hand.  The  habeas 
corpus  act  was  repeatedly  suspended. 
Public  meetings  were  placed  under 
severe  restraints.  The  government  ob- 
tained from  parliament  power  to  send 
out  of  the  country  aliens  who  wei'C  sus- 
pected of  evil  designs  ;  and  that  power 
was  not  suffered  to  be  idle.  Writers 
who  propounded  doctrines  adverse  to 
monarchy  and  aristocracy,  were  pro- 
scribed and  punislied  without  mercy. 
It  was  hardly  safe  for  a  republican  to 
avow  his  political  creed  over  his  beef- 
steak and  his  bottle  of  port  at  a  chop- 
house.    The  old  laws  of  Scotland  against 


William  Pitt.  183 

sedition,  laws  which  were  considered 
by  Englishmen  as  barbarons,  and  which 
a  snccession  of  governments  liad  suf- 
fered to  rnst,  were  now  furbished  up 
and  sharpened  anew.  Men  of  culti- 
vated minds  and  polished  manners 
were,  for  offences  which  at  Westmin- 
ster wouJd  have  been  treated  as  mere 
misdemeanors,  sent  to  herd  with  fel- 
ons at  Botany  Bay.  Some  reformers, 
whose  opinions  were  extravagant,  and 
whose  language  was  intemperate,  but 
who  had  never  dreamed  of  subverting 
the  government  by  physical  force,  were 
indicted  for  high  treason,  and  were 
saved  from  the  gallows  only  by  the 
righteous  verdicts  of  juries.  This  seve- 
rity was  at  the  time  loudly  applauded 
by  alarmists  whom  fear  had  made  cruel, 
but  will  be  seen  in  a  very  different 
light  by  posterity.  The  truth  is,  that 
'he  Englishmen  who  wished  for  a  revo- 
lution were,  even  in  number,  not  for- 


184  William  Pitt. 

midable,  and,  in  every  thing  but  num- 
ber, a  faction  utterly  contemptible,  with- 
out arms,  or  funds,  or  plans,  or  organ- 
ization, or  leader.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  Pitt,  strong  as  he  was  in  the 
support  of  the  great  body  of  the  nation, 
might  easily  have  repressed  the  turbu- 
lence of  th.e  discontented  minority  by 
firmly  yet  temperately  enforcing  the 
ordinary  law.  Whatever  vigor  he 
showed  during  this  unfortunate  part  of 
his  life,  was  vigor  out  of  place  and 
season.  He  was  all  feebleness  and 
languor  in  his  conflict  with  the  foreign 
enemy  who  was  really  to  be  dreaded, 
and  reserved  all  his  energy  and  reso- 
lution for  the  domestic  enemy,  who 
t  safely  have  been  despised. 
One  part  only  of  Pitt's  conduct  dur- 
ing the  last  eight  years  of  the  eighteenth 
century  deserves  high  praise.  He  was 
the  first  English  minister  who  formed 
great  designs  for  the  benefit  of  Ireland 


William  Pitt,  185 

The  manner  in  wliicli  the  Homan  Catho- 
lic population  of  that  nnfortimate  coun- 
try had  been  kept  down  during  many 
generations  seemed  to  him  unjust  and 
cruel ;  and  it  was  scarcely  possible  for 
a  man  of  his  abilities  not  to  perceive 
that,  in  n,  contest  against  the  Jacobins, 
the  Roman  Catholics  were  his  natural 
allies.  Had  lie  been  able  to  do  all  that 
he  wished,  it  is  probable  that  a  wise  and 
liberal  policy  would  have  averted  the 
rebellion  of  1798.  But  the  difficulties 
which  he  encountered  were  great,  per 
haps  insurmountable  ;  and  the  Ilomar 
Catholics  were,  rather  by  his  misfortun#a 
than  by  his  fault,  thrown  into  the  liandp 
of  the  Jacobins.  There  was  a  third 
great  rising  of  the  Irishry  against  thf» 
Englishry,  a  rising  not  less  formidable 
than  the  risings  of  1641  and  1689.  The 
Englishry  remained  victorious;  and  it 
was  necessary  for  Pitt,  as  it  had  been 
necessary  for   Oliver    Cromwell    and 


186  Williain  Pitt. 

William  of  Orange  before  liim,  to  con- 
Bider  how  the  A^ctory  should  be  need. 
It  is  only  just  to  his  memory  to  say 
that  he  formed  a  scheme  of  policy,  so 
j  grand  and  so  simple,  so  righteous  and 
j  so  humane,  that  it  would  alone  entitle 
I  him  to  a  high  place  among  statesmen. 
"xle  determined  to  make  Ireland  one 
kingdom  with  England,  and,  at  the 
same  time,  to  relieve  the  Roman  Ca- 
tholic lait}^  from  civil  disabilities,  and 
to  grant  a  public  maintenance  to  the 
Roman  Catholic  clergy.  Had  he  been 
able  to  carry  these  noble  designs  into 
efiect,  the  Llnion  would  have  been  a 
Union  indeed.  It  would  have  been 
inseparably  associated  in  the  minds  of 
the  great  majority  of  Irishmen  with 
civil  and  religious  freedom;  and  the 
old  parliament  in  College  Green  would 
have  been  regretted  only  by  a  small 
knot  of  discarded  jobbers  and  oppres- 
sors, and  would  have  been  remember- 


William  Pitt.  187 

K'i  by  tlie  body  of  tlie  nation  with  the 
loathing  and  contempt  due  to  the  most 
tyrannical  and  the  most  corrnpt  as 
senibly,  that  liad  ever  sat  in  Europe. 
But  Pitt  coukl  execute  only  one  half 
of  what  he  liad  projected.  He  suc- 
ceeded in  obtaining  the  consent  of  the 
parliaments  of  both  kingdoms  to  the 
— Uliion  :  but  that  reconciliation  of  races 
and  sects,  witliout  which  the  Union 
could  exist  only  in  name,  was  not  ac- 
complished. He  was  well  aware  tliat 
he  was  likely  to  find  difficulties  in  the 
closet.  But  he  flattered  hiniself  that, 
by  cautious  and  dexterous  management, 
those  difficulties  mio-ht  be  overcome. 
Unhappily,  there  were  traitors  and  syc- 
ophants in  high  place,  who  did  not 
sufter  him  to  take  his  own  time  and 
his  own  way,  but  prematurely  disclosed 
his  scheme  to  the  King,  and  disclosed 
it  in  the  manner  most  likely  to  ii-ritate 
and  alarm  a  weak  and  diseased  mind. 


188  William  Pitt. 

His  Majesty  absurdly  iniagined  that 
his  coronation  oath  bound  him  to  refuse 
his  assent  to  any  bill  for  relieving  Ro- 
man Catholics  from  civil  disabilities. 
To  argue  with  him  was  impossible. 
Dundas  tried  to  explain  the  matter,  but 
was  told  to  keep  his  Scotch  metaphysics 
to  himself.  Pitt,  and  Pitt's  ablest  col- 
leagues, resigned  their  offices.  It  was 
necessary  that  the  King  should  make  a 
new  arrangement.  But  by  this  time 
his  anger  and  distress  had  brought  back 
the  nuxladj^  which  had,  many  years  be- 
fore, incapacitated  him  for  the  discharge 
of  his  functions.  He  actually  assembled 
his  family,  read  the  Coronation  oath  to 
them,  and  told  them  that,  if  he  broke 
it,  the  Crowu  would  immediately  pass 
to  the  House  of  Savoy.  It  was  not 
until  after  an  interregnum  of  several 
weeks  that  he  regained  the  full  use  of 
riis  small  faculties,  and  that  a  minis- 
try after  his  own  heart  was  at  length 
formed. 


William  Pitt,  189 

The  materials  out  of  wliicli  he  had 
to  construct  a  government  were  nei- 
ther solid  nor  splendid.  To  that  party, 
weak  in  numbers,  but  strong  in  every 
kind  of  talent,  which  was  hostile  to 
the  domestic  and  foreign  policy  of  his 
late  advisers,  he  could  not  have  re- 
course. For  that  party,  while  it  differed 
from  his  late  advisers  on  every  point 
on  which  they  had  been  honored  with 
his  approbation,  cordially  agreed  with 
them  as  to  the  single  matter  which  had 
brought  on  them  his  displeasure.  All 
that  was  left  to  him  was  to  call  up  the 
rear  rank  of  tlie  old  ministry  to  form 
tlie  front  rank  of  a  new  ministry.  In 
an  age  pre-eminently  fruitful  of  parlia- 
mentary talents,  a  cabinet  was  formed 
containing  hardly  a  single  man  who, 
in  parliamentary  talents,  could  be  con- 
sidered as  even  of  the  second  rate.  The 
most  important  offices  in  the  state  were 
bestowed  on   decorous    and  laborious 


190  William  Piti. 

mediocrity.  Heniy  Addington  was  at 
the  head  of  the  treasury.  He  liad 
been  an  early,  indeed  a  liereditary 
friend  of  Pitt,  and  had  by  Pitt's  in- 
fluence been  placed,  while  still  a  young 
man,  in  the  chair  of  the  House  of 
Commons.  He  was  universally  admit- 
ted to  liave  been  the  best  speaker  that 
had  sat  in  that  chair  since  the  retire- 
ment of  Onslow.  But  nature  liad  not 
bestowed  on  him  ver}^  vigorous  facul- 
ties ;  and  the  highly  respectable  situa- 
tion whicli  he  had  long  occupied  with 
honor,  had  rather  unfitted  than  fitted 
him  for  the  discharge  of  his  new  du- 
ties. His  business  had  been  to  bear 
himself  evenl)^  between  contendiiig 
factions.  He  had  taken  no  part  in  the 
war  of  words  ;  and  lie  had  always  been 
addressed  with  marked  deference  by 
Ihe  great  orators  who  thundered  against 
each  other  from  his  riglit  and  from  his 
left.     It  was  not  strange  that  when,  foi 


William  JPitt,  191 

tlie  first  time,  lie  had  to  encounter  keen 
and  vigorous  antagonists,  who  dealt 
hard  blows  without  the  smallest  cere- 
mony, he  should  have  been  awkward 
and  unready,  or  that  the  air  of  dignity 
and  authority  which  he  had  acquired 
in  his  former  post,  and  of  which  he 
had  not  divested  himself,  should  have 
made  his  helplessness  laughable  and 
pitiable.  Nevertheless,  during  many 
months,  his  power  seemed  to  stand 
firm.  He  was  a  favorite  with  the  King, 
whom  he  resembled  in  narrowness  of 
mind,  and  to  whom  he  was  more  obse- 
quij3us  than  Pitt  had  ever  been.  The 
nation  was  put  into  high  good  humor 
by  a  peace  with  France.  The  enthu 
siasm  with  which  the  upper  and  mid 
die  classes  had  rushed  into  the  war  had 
spent  itself.  Jacobinism  was  no  longer 
formidable.  Everywhere  there  was  a 
strong  reaction  against  what  was  called 
the  atheistical  and  anarchical  philoso- 


192  William  Pitt. 

phj  of  the  eigliteenth  century.  Bona- 
parte, now  First  Consul,  was  busy  in 
constructing  out  of  the  ruins  of  old 
institutions  a  new"  ecclesiastical  estab- 
lishment and  a  new  order  of  knight- 
hood. That  nothing  less  than  the  do- 
minion of  the  w^hoie  civilized  world 
would  satisfy  his  selfish  ambition  was 
not  yet  suspected  ;  nor  did  even  w^ise 
men  see  any  reason  to  doubt  that  he 
might  be  as  safe  a  neighbor  as  any 
prince  of  tlie  House  of  Bourbon  had 
been.  The  treaty  of  Amiens  was  there- 
fore hailed  by  the  great  body  of  the 
English  people  with  extravagant  joy. 
The  popularity  of  the  minister  was  for 
the  moment  immense.  His  want  of 
parliamentary  ability  was,  as  yet,  of 
little  consequence  ;  for  he  had  scarcely 
any  adversary  to  encounter.  The  old 
opposition,  delighted  by  the  peace, 
regarded  him  wdth  favor.  A  new  op- 
position  had   indeed   been  formed  by 


William  Fitt,  195 

Bome  of  the  late  ministers,  and  was  led 
b}"  Grenville  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
and  by  Windham  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. But  the  new  opposition  could 
scarcely  muster  ten  votes,  and  was 
regarded  with  no  favor  by  the  country. 
On  Pitt  the  ministers  relied  as  on  their 
firmest  support.  He  had  not,  like  some 
of  his  colleagues,  retired  in  anger.  He 
had  expressed  the  greatest  respect  for 
the  conscientious  scruple  which  had 
taken  pessession  of  the  royal  mind  ;  and 
he  had  promised  his  successors  all  the 
help  in  his  power.  In  private  his  advice 
was  at  their  service.  In  parliament  he 
took  his  seat  on  the  bench  behind  them  ; 
and,  in  more  than  one  debate,  defended 
them  with  powers  far  superior  to  their 
own.  The  King  perfectly  understood 
the  value  of  such  assistance.  On  one 
occasion,  at  the  palace,  he  took  the  old 
minister  and  the  new  minister  aside. 
"  If  we  three,''  he  said,  "  keep  together, 
all  will  oro  well." 


194  William  Pitt, 

But  it  was  hardly  possible,  human 
nature  being  what  it  is,  and,  more  es 
pecially,  Pitt  and  Addington  being 
what  they  were,  that  this  union  should 
be  durable.  Pitt,  conscious  of  superior 
powers,  imagined  that  the  place  which 
w  he  had  quitted  was  now  occupied  by  a 
mere  puppet  which  he  had  set  up,  which 
he  was  to  govern  while  he  suffered  it 
to  remain,  and  which  he  w^as  to  fling 
aside  as  soon  as  he  wished  to  resume 
his  old  position.  I^or  was  it  long  be- 
fore he  began  to  pine  for  the  power 
which  he  had  relinquished.  He  had 
been  so  early  raised  to  supreme  author- 
ity in  the  state,  and  had  enjoyed  that 
authority  so  long,  that  it  had  become 
necessary  to  him.  In  retirement  his 
days  passed  heavil)\  He  could  not,  like 
Fox,  forget  the  pleasures  and  cares  of 
ambition  in  the  company  of  Euripides 
or  Herodotus.  Pride  restrained  him 
from  intimating,  even   to  his   dearest 


William  Pitt.  195 

friends,  that  lie  wished  to  be  again 
minister.  But  he  thought  it  strange, 
almost  ungrateful,  that  his  wish  had 
not  been  divined,  that  it  had  not  been 
anticipated,  bj  one  whom  he  regarded 
as  his  deputy. 

Addington,  on  the  other  hand,  w^as 
by  no  means  inclined  to  descend  from 
his  high  position.  lie  Avas,  indeed, 
under  a  delusion  much  resembling  that 
of  Abon  Hassan  in  the  Arabian  tale, 
His  brain  was  turned  by  his  short  and 
unreal  caliphate.  He  took  his  eleva- 
tion quite  seriously,  attributed  it  tohis 
own  merit,  and  considered  himself  as 
one  of  the  great  triumvirate  of  English 
statesmen,  as  worthy  to  make  a  third 
with  Pitt  and  Fox. 

Such  being  the  feelings  of  the  late 
minister  and  of  tlie  present  minister,  a 
vupture  was  inevitable  ;  and  there  was 
no  want  of  persons  bent  on  making 
that     rupture     speedy     and     violent. 


196  William  Pitt, 

Some  of  these  persons  wounded  Ad- 
dington's  pride  by  representing  him  as 
a  lackey,  sent  to  keep  a  place  on  the 
treasury  bench  till  his  master  should 
find  it  convenient  to  come.  Others 
took  every  opportunity  of  praising  him 
at  Pitt's  expense.  Pitt  had  waged  a 
long,  a  bloody,  a  costly,  an  unsuccess- 
ful war.  Addington  had  made  peace. 
Pitt  had  suspended  the  constitutional 
liberties  of  Englishmen.  Under  Ad- 
dington those  liberties  were  again  en- 
joyed. Pitt  had  wasted  the  public  re- 
sources. Addington  was  carefully  nur- 
sing them.  It  was  sometimes  but  too 
evident  that  these  compliments  were 
not  unpleasing  to  Addington.  Pitt  be- 
came cold  and  reserved.  During  many 
months  he  remained  at  a  distance  from 
London.  Meanwhile  his  most  inti- 
mate friends,  in  spite  of  his  declara- 
tions tliat  he  made  no  complaint,  and 
ihat  he  had  no  wish  for  office,  exerted 


William  Pitt,  197 

themselves  to  effect  a  change  of  min- 
istry. His  favorite  disciple,  George 
Canning,  yonng,  ardent,  ambitions, 
wtli  great  powers  and  great  virtnes, 
but  with  a  temper  too  restless  and  a 
wit  too  satirical  for  his  own  happiness, 
was  indefatigable.  He  spoke  ;  he 
wrote  ;  he  intrigued ;  he  tried  to  induce 
a  large  number  of  the  supporters  of  the 
government  to  sign  a  round  robin  de- 
siring a  change ;  he  made  game  of  Ad- 
dington  and  of  Addington's  relations  in  a 
succession  of  lively  pasquinades.  The 
minister's  partisans  retorted  with  equal 
acrimony,  if  not  with  equal  vivacity. 
Pitt  co^nld  keep  out  of  the  affray  only  by 
keeping  out  of  politics  altogether;  and 
this  it  soon  became  impossible  for  him  to 
do.  Had  Napoleon,  content  with  the  first 
place  among  the  sovereigns  of  the  Conti- 
nent, and  with  a  military  reputation  sur- 
passing that  of  Marlborough  or  of  Tu- 
renne,  devoted  himself  to  the  noble  task 


i98  William  Pitt, 

of  making  France  happy  by  mild  admin- 
istration and  wise  legislation,  our  coun- 
try might  have  long  continued  to  tol- 
erate a  government  of  feir  intentions 
and  feeble  abilities.  Unhappily,  the 
treaty  of  Amiens  had  scarcely  been 
signed,  when  the  restless  ambition  and 
the  insupportable  insolence  of  the  First 
Consul  convinced  the  great  body  of 
the  English  people  that  the  peace,  so  ea- 
gerly welcomed,  was  only  a  precarious 
armistice.  As  it  became  clearer  and 
clearer  that  a  war  for  the  dignity,  the 
independence,  the  very  existence  of  the 
nation  was  at  hand,  men  looked  with 
increasing  uneasiness  on  the  weak  and 
languid  cabinet,  which  w^ould  have  to 
contend  against  an  enemy  who  united 
more  than  the  power  of  Lewns  the 
Great  to  more  than  the  genius  of  Fred- 
jjenck  the  Great.  It  is  true  that  Adding- 
ton  might  easily  have  been  a  better 
War  minister  than  Pitt,  and  could  not 


William  Pitt,  199 

possibly  liave  been  a  worse.  But  Pitt 
had  cast  a  spell  on  the  public  mind. 
The  eloquence,  the  judgment,  tlie  calm 
and  disdainful  firmness  which  he  had, 
during  many  years,  displayed  in  par- 
liament, deluded  the  world  into  the 
belief  that  he  must  be  eminently  quali- 
fied to  superintend  every  department  of 
politics ;  and  they  imagined,  even  after 
the  miserable  failures  of  Dunkirk,  of 
Quiberon,  and  of  the  Helder,  that  he 
was  the  only  statesman  who  could  cope 
with  Bonaparte.  This  feeling  was  no- 
where stronger  than  among  Adding- 
ton^s  own  colleagues.  The  pressure 
put  on  him  was  so  strong,  that  he 
could  not  help  yielding  to  it:  yet, 
even  in  yielding,  he  showed  how  far 
he  was  from  knowing  his  own  place. 
His  first  proposition  was,  that  some  in- 
significant nobleman  should  be  first 
lord  of  the  treasury  and  nominal  head 
of  the  administration,  and  that  the  real 


£00  William  Pitt. 

power  should  be  divided  between  Pitt 
and  himself,  who  were  to  be  secretaries 
of  state.  Pitt,  as  might  have  been  ex- 
pected, refused  even  to  discuss  such  a 
scheme,  and  talked  of  it  with  bitter 
mirth.  "  Which  secretarjsliip  was 
offered  to  3'ou  ? "  his  friend  Wilber- 
force  asked.  "  Eoally,"  said  Pitt,  "I 
had  not  the  curiosity  to  inquire."  Ad- 
dington  was  frightened  into  bidding 
liigher.  He  offered  to  resign  the  treas- 
ury to  Pitt,  on  condition  that  there 
should  be  no  extensive  change  in  the 
government.  But  Pitt  would  listen  to 
no  such  terms.  Then  came  a  dispute 
such  as  often  arises  after  negotiations 
orally  conducted,  even  when  the  nego- 
tiators are  men*  of  strict  honor.  Pitt 
gave  one  account  of  wliat  had  passed  ; 
Addington  gave  another ;  and  though 
the  discrepancies  were  not  such  as 
necessarily  implied  any  intentional  vio- 
lation of  truth  on  either  side,  both 
were  greatly  exasperated. 


William  Pitt.  201 

Meanwhile  the  quarrel  with  the 
First  Consul  had  come  to  a  crisis.  On 
the  16th  of  May  1803,  the  King  sent  a 
message  calling  on  the  House  of  Com- 
mons to  snJDport  him  in  withstanding 
the  ambitions  and  encroaching  policy 
of  France;  and  on  the  22d,  the  House 
took  the  message  into  consideration. 

Pitt  had  now  been  living  many 
months  in  retirement.  There  had  been 
a  general  election  since  he  had  spoken 
in  parliament,  and  there  were  two 
hundred  members  who  had  never 
heard  him.  It  was  known  that  on 
this  occasion  he  would  be  in  his  place, 
and  curiosity  was  wound  up  to  the 
highest  point.  Unfortunately,  the 
fihort-hand  wri>3rs  were,  in  conse- 
quence of  some  mistake,  shut  out  on 
Uiat  day  from  the  galler}^,  so  that  the 
newspapers  contained  only  a  very 
meagre  report  of  the  proceedings. 
But  several  accounts  of  what  passed 


202  William  Pitt. 

are  extant ;  and  of  those  accounts,  the 
most  interesting  is  contained  in  an  un- 
published letter  written  by  a  very- 
young  member,  John  "William  Ward, 
afterwards  Earl  of  Dudley.  When 
Pitt  rose,  he  was  received  with  loud 
cheering.  At  every  pause  in  his 
Bpeech  there  was  a  burst  of  applause. 
The  peroration  is  said  to  have  been 
one  of  the  most  animated  and  magnifi- 
cent ever  heard  in  parliament.  "  Pitt's 
speech,"  Fox  wTote  a  few  days  later, 
"was  admired  very  much,  and  vevj 
justly.  I  think  it  was  the  best  he  ever 
made  in  that  style."  The  debate  was 
adjourned;  and  on  the  second  night 
Fox  replied  in  an  oration  which,  as  the 
most  zealous  Pittites  were  forced  to  ac- 
knowledge, left  the  palm  of  eloquence 
doubtful.  Addington  made  a  pitiable 
appearance  between  the  two  great  ri- 
vals ;  and  it  was  observed  that  Pitt, 
while  exhorting  the  Commons  to  stand 


Williain  Pitt,  203 

resolutely  by  the  executive  govern- 
ment against  France,  said  not  a  word 
indicating  esteem  or  friendship  for  the 
prime  minister. 

/  War  was  speedily  declared.  The 
[1  First  Consul  threatened  to  invade  Eng- 
land at  the  liead  of  the  conquerors  of 
Belgium  and  Italy,  and  formed  a  great 
camp  near  the  Straits  of  Dover.  On 
the  other  side  of  those  Straits  the  whole 
population  of  our  island  was  ready  to 
rise  up  as  one  man  in  defence  of  the 
soil.  At  this  conjuncture,  as  at  some 
other  great  conjunctures  in  our  history, 
the  conjuncture  of  1660,  for  example, 
and  the  conjuncture  of  1688,  there  was 
a  general  disposition  among  honest 
'and  patriotic  men  to  forget  old  quar- 
rels, and  to  regard  as  a  friend  every 
person  who  was  ready,  in  the  existing 
emergency,  to  do  his  ]3art  towards  the 
saving  of  the  state.  A  coalition  of  all 
the  first  men  in  the  country  would,  at 


204  William  Pitt, 

tliat  moment,  have  been  as  popular  aa 
the  coalition  of  1783  had  been  unpopu- 
lar. Alone  in  the  kingdom  the  King 
looked  with  perfect  complacency  on  a 
cabinet  in  which  no  man  superior  to 
himself  in  genius  was  to  be  found,  and 
was  so  far  from  being  willing  to  admit 
all  his  ablest  subjects  to  office,  that  he 
was  bent  on  excluding  them  alL 

A  few  months  passed  before  the  dif- 
ferent parties  which  agreed  in  regard- 
ing the  government  with  dislike  and 
contempt,  came  to  an  understanding 
with  each  otlier.  But  in  tlie  spring 
of  ISOtl-,  it  became  evident  that  the 
w^eakest  of  ministries  would  have  to  de- 
fend itself  against  the  strongest  of  op- 
positions ;  an  opposition  made  up  of 
three  oppositions,  each'  of  which  would, 
separatel}^  have  been  formidable  from 
ability,  and  which,  when  united,  were 
also  formidable  from  number.  The 
party  which   had   opposed  the  peace, 


William  Pitt,  205 

headed  by  Granville  and  Windham, 
and  the  party  which  had  opposed  the 
renewal  of  the  war,  headed  by  Fox, 
concurred  in  thinking  that  the  men 
now  in  power  were  incapable  of  either 
making  a  good  peace  or  waging  a  vig- 
orous war.  Pitt  had,  in  1802,  spoken 
for  peace  against  the  party  of  Gren- 
ville,  and  had,  in  1803,  spoken  for  war 
against  the  party  of  Fox.  But  of  the 
capacity  of  the  cabinet,  and  especially 
of  its  chief,  for  the  conduct  of  great 
affairs,  he  thought  as  meanly  as  either 
Fox  or  Grenville.  Questions  were 
easily  found  on  which  all  the  enemies 
of  the  government  could  act  cordially 
together.  The  unfortunate  iirst  lord  of 
the  treasury,  who  had,  during  the  ear- 
lier months  of  his  administration,  been 
supported  by  Pitt  on  one  side,  and  by 
Fox  on  the  other,  now  had  to  answer 
Pitt,  and  to  be  answered  by  Fox.  Two 
sharp  debates,  followed  by  close  divi- 


206  William  Pitt, 

Bions,  maQe  liim  wearj  of  liis  post.  It 
was  known,  too,  that  the  npper  house 
was  even  more  hostile  to  him  than  the 
lower,  that  the  Scotch  representative 
peers  wavered,  that  there  were  signs  of 
mutiny  among  the  bishops.  In  the 
cabinet  itself  there  was  discord,  and, 
woi'se  than  discord,  treachery.  It  was 
necessary  to  give  way :  the  ministry 
was  dissolved  ;  and  the  task  of  form- 
ing a  government  was  intrusted  to 
PiU. 

Pitt  was  of  opinion  that  there  was 
now  an  opportunity,  such  as  had  never 
before  offered  itself,  and  sucli  as  might 
never  offer  itself  again,  of  uniting  in 
the  public  service,  on  honorable  terms, 
all  the  eminent  talents  of  the  kingdom. 
The  passions  to  which  the  French  Revo- 
lution  had  given  birth  were  extinct. 
The  madness  of  the  innovator  and  the 
madness  of  the  alarmist  had  alike  had 
their  day.      Jacobinism   and   Anti-ja- 


Willi  a  711  Pitt.  20*? 

cobinism  had  gone  out  of  fashion  to- 
gether. The  most  liberal  statesman 
did  not  think  that  season  propitious  for 
schemes  of  parliamentary  reform ;  and 
the  most  conservative  statesman  could 
not  pretend  that  there  was  any  occasion 
for  gagging  bills  and  suspensions  of  the 
habeas  corpus  act.  The  great  struggle 
for  independence  and  national  honor 
occupied  all  minds ;  and  those  who 
w^ere  agreed  as  to  the  duty  of  maintain- 
ing tliat  struggle  with  vigoi-,  might  well 
postpone  to  a  more  convenient  time  all 
disputes  about  matters  comparatively 
unimportant.  Strongly  iuipressed  by 
these  considerations,  Pitt  wished  to 
form  a  ministry  including  all  the  first 
men  in  the  country.  The  treasury  he 
reserved  for  himself  ;•  and  to  Fox  he  pro- 
posed to  assign  a  share  of  power  little 
inferior  to  his  own. 

The    plan   w^as   excellent;    but  the 
King  w^ould  not  hear  of  it.     Dull,  ob- 


208  William  Pitt, 

Btinate,  unforgiving,  and,  at  that  time, 
half  mad,  lie  positively  i-efused  to  ad- 
mit Fox  into  his  service.  Anybody 
else,  even  men  who  liad  gone  as  far 
as  Fox,  or  further  than  Fox,  in  what 
his  Majesty  considered  as  Jacobinism, 
Sheridan,  Grey,  Erskine,  should  be 
graciously  received  ;  but  Fox  never. 
During  sevei'al  hours  Pitt  labored  in 
vain  to  reason  down  tliis  senseless 
antipathy.  That  he  was  perfectly  sin- 
cere there  can  be  no  doubt  ;  but  it  was 
not  enough  to  be  sincere  ;  he  should 
have  been  resolute.  Had  he  declared 
himself  determined  not  to  take  office 
without  Fox,  the  royal  obstinacy  would 
have  given  way,  as  it  gave  way,  a  few 
months  later,  when  opposed  to  the  im- 
mutable resolution  of  Lord  Grenville. 
In  an  evil  hour  Pitt  yielded.  He  flat- 
tered himself  with  the  hope  that, 
though  lie  consented  to  forego  the  aid 
of  his  illustrious  rival,  there  would  still 


William  Pitt.  209 

reirain  ample  materials  for  the  forma- 
tion of  an  efficient  ministry.  That 
hope  was  cruelly  disappointed.  Fox 
entreated  his  friends  to  leave  personal 
considerations  out  of  the  question,  and 
declared  that  he  would  support,  with 
the  utmost  cordiality,  an  efficient  and 
patriotic  ministry  from  which  he  should 
be  himself  excluded.  Not  only  his 
friends,  however,  but  Grenville,  and 
Grenville's  adherents,  answered  with 
one  voice,  that  the  question  was  not 
personal  ;  that  a  great  constitutional 
principle  was  at  stake,  and  that  they 
would  not  take  office  while  a  man  emi- 
nently qualified  to  render  service  to 
the  commonwealth  was  placed  under  a 
ban  merely  because  he  was  disliked  at 
court.  All  that  was  left  to  Pitt  was  to 
construct  a  government  out  of  the 
wreck  of  Addington's  feeble  adminis- 
tration. The  small  circle  of  his  personal 
retainers   furnished  him  with   a   verv 


210  William  Pitt, 

few  useful  assistauts,  particularly  Dun- 
das,  who  had  been  created  Viscount 
Melville,  Lord  Harrowby,  and  Can- 
ning. 

Such  was  the  inauspicious  manner 
in  which  Pitt  entered  on  his  second  ad- 
ministration. The  whole  history  of  that 
admiuistration  was  of  a  piece  with  the 
commencement.  Almost  every  month 
brought  some  new  disaster  or  disgrace. 
To  the  war  with  France  was  soon  added 
a  war  with  Spain.  The  opponents  of 
the  minister  were  numerous,  able,  and 
active.  His  most  useful  coadjutors  he 
soon  lost.  Sickness  deprived  him  of 
the  help  of  Lord  Harrowby.  It  was 
discovered  that  Lord  Melville  had  been 
guilty  of  highly  culpable  laxit}^  in 
transactions  relating  to  public  money. 
He  was  censured  by  the  House  of 
Commons,  driven  from  office,  ejected 
from  the  privy  council,  and  impeached 
of  liiixh  crimes  and  misdemeanors.  The 


William  Pitt.  211 

blow  fell  lieavy  on  Pitt.  It  gave  liim, 
he  said  in  parliament,  a  deep  pang  ; 
and,  as  he  uttered  the  word  pang,  his 
lip  quivered ;  his  voice  shook ;  he 
paused  ;  and  his  hearers  thought  that 
he  was  about  to  burst  into  tears.  Such 
tears  shed  by  Eldon  would  have  moved 
nothing  but  laughter.  Shed  by  the 
warm-hearted  and  open-hearted  Fox, 
they  would  have  moved  sympathy,  but 
would  have  caused  no  surprise.  But  a 
tear  from  Pitt  would  have  been  some- 
thing portentous.  He  suppressed  his 
emotion,  however,  and  proceeded  with 
his  usual  majestic  self-]30Ssession. 

His  difficulties  compelled  him  to  re- 
sort to  various  expedients.  At  one 
time  Addington  was  persuaded  to  ac- 
cept office  with  a  peerage;  but  he 
brought  no  additional  strength  to  the 
government.  Though  he  went  through 
the  form  of  reconciliation,  it  was  im- 
possible  for   him   to   forget  the  past 


212  William  Pitt, 

While  he  remained  in  place  he  waa 
jealous  and  j^nnctilious ;  and  he  soon 
retired  again.  At  another  time  Pitt 
renewed  his  efforts  to  overcome  liis  mas- 
ter's aversion  to  Fox ;  and  it  was  ru- 
mored that  the  King's  obstinacy  was 
gradually  giving  way.  But,  meanwhile, 
it  was  impossible  for  the  minister  to 
conceal  from  the  public  eye  the  decay 
of  his  health  and  the  constant  anxiety 
which  gnawed  at  his  heart.  His  sleep 
was  broken.  Ilis  food  ceased  to  nour- 
ish him.  All  who  j^assed  him  in  the 
park,  all  wlio  had  interviews  with  hira 
in  Downing  Street,  saw  misery  written 
in  his  face.  The  peculiar  look  which 
he  wore  during  the  last  months  of  his 
life  was  often  pathetically  described  by 
Wilberforce,  who  used  to  call  it  the 
Austerlitz  look. 

Still  the  vigor  of  Pitt's  intellectual 
faculties,  and  the  intrepid  haughtiness 
of  his  spirit,  remained  unaltered.     He 


William  Pitt.  213 

had  staked  oveiy  thing  on  a  great 
venture.  He  had  succeeded  in  form- 
ing another  mighty  coalition  against 
the  French  ascendency.  The  united 
forces  of  Austria,  Russia,  and  England 
might,  he  hoped,  oppose  an  insurmount- 
able barrier  to  the  ambition  of  the 
common  enemy.  But  the  genius  and 
energy  of  Napoleon  prevailed.  While 
the  English  troops  were  preparing  to 
embark  for  Germany,  while  the  Rus- 
sian troops  were  slowly  coming  up 
from  Poland,  he,  witli  rapidity  unpre- 
cedented in  modern  war,  moved  a  hun- 
dred thousand  men  from  the  shores  of 
the  Ocean  to  the  Black  Forest,  and 
compelled  a  great  Austrian  army  to 
Burj-ender  at  Ulm.  To  the  first  faint 
rumors  of  this  calamity  Pitt  w^ould 
give  no  credit.  He  was  irritated  by 
the  alarms  of  those  around  him.  "  Do 
uot  believe  a  word  of  it,"  he  said :  '-  it 
is   all   a   fiction."    The   next   day   he 


214  William  Fitt. 

received  a  Dutcli  newspaper  contain- 
ing the  capitnlation.  lie  knew  no 
Dutch.  It  was  Sunday  ;  and  the  pub- 
lic offices  were  shut.  He  carried  the 
paper  to  Lord  Malniesbnry,  who  had 
been  minister  in  IIoHand ;  and  Lord 
Mahiiesbnry  transhited  it.  Pitt  tried 
to  bear  up,  but  the  shock  was  too  great; 
and  he  went  away  with  death  in  his 
face. 

The  news  of  the  battle  of  Trafalgar 
arrived  four  days  later,  and  seemed  for 
a  moment  to  revive  him.  Forty-eight 
hours  after  that  most  glorions  and  most 
mournful  of  victories  liad  been  an- 
nounced to  the  country  came  the  Lord 
Mayor's  day  ;  and  Pitt  dined  at  Guild- 
hall. His  popularity  had  declined. 
But  on  this  occasion  the  multitude, 
greatly  excited  by  the  recent  tidings, 
welcomed  him  enthusiastically,  took 
off  his  horses  in  Cheapside,  and  drew 
his  carriage  up   King   Street.     "When 


William  Pitt,  216 

his  health  was  clriink,  he  returned 
thants  in  two  or  three  of  those  stately 
sentences  of  which  he  had  a  boundless 
command.  Several  of  those  who  heard 
him  laid  up  his  words  in  their  hearts  ; 
for  they  were  the  last  words  that  he 
ever  uttered  in  public :  "  Let  us  hope 
that  England,  having  saved  herself  by 
her  enei'gy,  may  save  Europe  by  lier 
example." 

This  '  w^as  but  a  momentary  rally. 
Austerlitz  soon  completed  wliat  Ulm 
had  begun.  Early  in  December  Pitt 
had  retired  to  Bath,  in  the  hope  that 
he  might  there  gather  strength  for  the 
approaching  session.  While  he  was 
languishing  there  on  his  sofa  arrived 
the  news  that  a  decisive  battle  had  been 
fouglit  and  lost  in  Moravia,  that  tlie  coa- 
lition was  dissolved,  that  the  Continent 
was  at  tlie  feet  of  France.  He  sank 
down  under  the  blow.  Ten  days  later, 
he  was  so  emaciated  that  liis  most  inti- 


216  William  Pitt. 

mate  friends  hardly  knew  liim.  He 
came  np  from  Bath  by  slow  journeys, 
and,  on  the  11th  of  January,  1806, 
reached  his  villa  at  Putney.  Parlia- 
ment was  to  meet  on  the  21st.  On  the 
20th  was  to  be  the  parliamentary  din- 
ner, at  the  house  of  the  first  lord  of 
the  treasury,  in  Downing  Street ;  and 
the  cards  were  already  issued.  But 
the  days  of  the  great  minister  were 
numbered.  The  only  chance  for  his 
life,  and  that  a  very  slight  chance,  was, 
that  he  should  resign  his  office,  and 
pass  some  months  in  profound  repose. 
His  colleagues  paid  him  very  short 
visits,  and  carefully  avoided  political 
conversation.  But  his  spirit,  long  ac- 
customed to  dominion,  could  not,  even 
in  that  extremity,  relinquish  hopes 
which  everybody  but  himself  perceiv- 
ed to  be  vain.  On  the  day  on  which 
he  was  carried  into  his  bed-room  at 
Putney,  the  Marquess  Wellesley,  whom 


William  Fitt,  217 

he  liad  long  loved,  whom  he  had  sent 
to  govern  India,  and  whose  administra- 
tion had  been  eminentl)^  able,  energet- 
ic, and  snccessful,  arrived  in  London 
after  an  absence  of  eight  years.  The 
friends  saw  each  otlier  once  more. 
There  w^as  an  affectionate  meeting, 
and  a  last  parting.  That  it  was  a 
last  parting,  Pitt  did  not  seem  to  be 
aware.  He  fancied  himself,  to  be  re- 
covering, talked  on  varions  subjects 
cheerfully,  and  with  an  unclouded 
mind,  and  pronounced  a  warm  and  dis- 
cerning eulogium  on  the  Marquess's 
brother  Arthur.  "I  never,"  he  said, 
"met  with  any  military  man  w^ith 
whom  it  was  so  satisfactory  to  con- 
verse." The  excitement  and  exertion 
of  this  interview  were  too  much  for  the 
sick  man.  lie  fainted  away ;  and 
Lord  A^ellesley  left  the  house,  con- 
vinced that  the  close  was  fast  ap- 
proaching. 


218  William  Pitt. 

And  now  members  of  parliament 
were  fast  coming  up  to  London.  The 
chiefs  of  the  opposition  met  for  the  pur- 
pose of  considering  the  course  to  be 
taken  on  the  first  day  of  tlie  session. 
It  was  easy  to  guess  what  would  be 
the  language  of  the  King's  speech,  and 
of  the  address  which  would  be  moved 
in  answer  to  that  speech.  An  amend- 
ment condemning  the  policy  of  the 
government  had  been  prepared,  and 
was  to  have  been  proposed  in  the 
House  of  Commons  by '  Lord  Henry 
Petty,  a  young  nobleman  who  liad  al- 
ready won  for  himself  that  place  in  the 
esteem  of  his  country  whicli,  after  the 
lapse  of  more  than  half  a  century,  he 
still  retains.  He  was  unwilling,  how- 
ever, to  come  forward  as  the  accuser 
of  one  who  Avas  incapable  of  defending 
himself.  Lord  Grenville,  wiio  had 
been  informed  of  Pitt's  state  by  Lord 
Wellesley,  and  had  been  deeply  affected 


William  Pitt.  219 

bj  it,  earnestly  recommended  forbear- 
ance; and  Fox,  witli-  cliaractcristic  gen- 
erosity and  good  nature,  gave  his  voice 
against  attacking  his  now  helpless 
rival.  "  Sunt  lacrymce  rerum,"  he 
said,  ''^  et  mentem  mortalia  tangnnt." 
On  the  first  day,  therefore,  there  was  no 
debate.  It  was  rumored  that  evening 
that  Pitt  was  better.  But  on  the  fol- 
lowing morning  his  physicians  pronoun- 
ced that  there  were  no  hopes.  Tlie 
commanding  faculties  of  Avhich  lie  had 
been  too  proud  were  begining  to  faiL- 
His  old  tutor  and  friend,  the  Bishop  of 
Lincoln,  informed  him  of  his  danger, 
and  gave  such  religious  advice  and 
consolation  as  a  confused  and  obscur- 
ed mind  could  receive.  Stories  were 
told  of  devout  sentiments  fervently 
littered  by  the  dying  man.  But  these 
stories  found  no  credit  with  any  body 
vlio  knew  him.  Wilberforce  pro- 
nounced it  impossible  that  they  could 


220  William  Pitt. 

be  true;  "Pitt,"  he  added,  "  was  a 
man  who  said  less* than  he  thonglit  on 
such  topics."  It  was  asserted  in  many 
after-dinner  speeches,  Grub  Street  ele- 
gies, and  academic  prize  poems  and 
prize  declamations,  that  the  great  min- 
ister died  exclaiming,  "  Oh,  my  coun- 
try !  "  This  is  a  fable  ;  but  it  is  true 
that  the  last  words  which  he  uttered, 
while  he  knew  what  he  said,  were  bro- 
ken exclamations  about  the  alarmino^ 
state  of  public  affairs.  He  ceased  to 
\  breathe  on  the  morning  of  the  23d  of 
1^ January  1806,  the  twenty-fifth  anniver- 
sary of  the  day  inwln'ch  he  first  took 
his  seat  in  parliament.  He  was  in  his 
forty- seventh  year,  and  had  been,  dur- 
ing near  nineteen  years,  first  lord  of 
the  treasury,  and  undisputed  chief  of 
the  administration.  Since  parliament- 
ary government  was  established  in 
England,  no  Englisli  statesman  has 
held   supreme  power  so   long.     Wal- 


William  Pitt,  221 

pole,  it  is  true,  was  first  lord  of  the 
treasury  during  mure  tlian  twenty 
years,  but  it  was  not  till  Walpole  had 
been  some  time  first  lord  of  the  treas- 
ury that  he  could  be  properly  called 
prime  minister.  ^ 

It  was  moved  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons that  Pitt  should  be  honored  with 
a  public  funeral,  and  a  monument. 
The  motion  was  opposed  by  Fox  in  a 
speech  which  deserves  to  be  studied  as 
a  model  of  good  taste  and  good  feeling. 
The  task  was  the  most  invidious  that 
ever  an  orator  undertook ;  but  it  was 
performed  with  a  humanity  and  del- 
icacy which  were  warmly  acknowl- 
edged by  the  mourning  friends  of  him 
who  was  gone.  The  motion  was  carried 
by  288  votes  to  89. 

Tlie  22d  of  February  was  fixed  for 
the  funeral.  The  corpse  having  lain 
'ji  state  during  two  days  in  the  Painted 
ChanlTDer,  was  borne  with  great  pomj) 


222  William  Pitt. 

to  the  nortliern  transept  of  the  Abbey. 
A  splendid  train  of  princes,  nobles, 
bishops  and  privy  councillors  followed. 
The  grave  of  Pitt  had  been  made  near 
to  the  spot  where  his  great  father  lay, 
near  also  to  the  spot  where  his  great 
rival  was  soon  to  lie.  The  sadness  of  the 
assistants  was  beyond  that  of  ordinary 
mourners.  For  he  whom  they  wei'e 
committing  to  the  dust,  had  died  of 
sorrows  and  anxieties  of  which  none 
of  the  survivors  could  be  altogether 
without  a  share.  AVilberforce,  ^yho 
carried  the  banner  before  the  hearse, 
described  the  awful  ceremony  with 
deep  feeling.  As  the  coffin  descend- 
ed into  the  earth,  he  said,  the  eagle 
face  of  Chatham  from  above  seemed  to 
look  down  with  consternation  into  the 
dark  house  which  was  receiving  all  that 
remained  of  so  much  power  and  glory. 
All  parties  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons readily  concurred  in  voting  forty 


William  Pitt.  223 

thousand  pounds  to  satisfy  the  demands 
of  Pitt's  creditors.  Some  of  his  ad- 
mirers seemed  to  consider  the  magni- 
tude of  his  embarrassments  as  a  circum- 
stance highly  honorable  to  him  ;  but 
men  of  sense  will  probably  be  of  a  dif- 
ferent opinion.  It  is  far  better,  no 
doubt,  that  a  great  minister  should 
carry  his  contempt  of  money  to  excess, 
than  that  he  should  contaminate  his 
hands  with  unlawful  gain.  But  it  is 
neither  right  nor  becoming  in  a  man 
to  whom  the  public  has  given  an  in- 
come more  than  sufficient  for  his  com- 
fort and  dignity,  to  bequeath  to  that 
public  a  great  debt,  the  effect  of  mere 
negligence  and  profusion.  As  first 
lord  of  the  treasury  and  chancellor 
of  the  exchequer,  Pitt  never  had  less 
than  six  thousand  a  year,  besides  an 
excellent  house.  In  1792  he  was 
forced  by  his  royal  master's  friendly 
hnportunity  to  accept  for  life  the  office 


224  William  Pitt, 

of  warden  of  the  Cinqne  Ports,  with 
near  four  thousand  a  year  more.  He 
had  neither  wife  nor  child  :  he  had  no 
needy  rehitions :  he  had  no  expensive 
tastes  :  he  had  no  long  election  hills. 
Had  he  given  but  a  quarter  of  an  hour 
a  week  to  the  regulation  of  his  house- 
hold, he  would  have  kept  his  expendi- 
ture within  bounds.  Or,  if  he  could 
not  spare  even  a  quarter  of  an  hour  a 
week  for  that  purpose,  he  had  numer- 
ous friends,  excellent  men  of  business, 
who  would  have  been  proud  to  act  as 
his  stewards.  One  of  those  friends, 
the  chief  of  a  great  commercial  house 
in  the  city,  made  an  attempt  to  put 
the  establishment  in  Downing  Street  to 
rights ;  but  in  vain.  He  found  that 
the  waste  of  the  servants'  hall  was  al- 
most fabulous.  The  quantity  of  butch- 
er's meat  charged  in  the  hills  was  nine 
hundredweiglit  a  week.  The  consump- 
tion of  poultry,  of  lish,  of  tea,  was  in 


William  Pitt,  225 

proportion.  The  character  of  Pitt 
would  have  stood  higher  if,  with  the 
disinterestedness  of  Pericles  and  of 
De  Witt,  he  had  united  their  dignified 
frugality. 

The  memory  of  Pitt  has  been  assail- 
ed, times  innumerable,  often  justly, 
often  unjustly;  but  it  has  suifered 
much  less  from  his  assailants  than  from 
his  eulogists.  For,  during  many  years, 
his  name  was  the  rallying  cry  of  a  class 
of  men  with  whom,  at  one  of  those  ter- 
rible conjunctures  which  confound  all 
ordinary  distinctions,  he  was  accident- 
ally and  temporarily  connected,  but  to 
whom,  on  almost  all  great  questions  of 
principle,  he  was  diametrically  op- 
posed. The  haters  of  parliamentary 
reform  called  themselves  Pittites,  not 
choosing  to  remember  that  Pitt  made 
three  motions  for  parliamentary  re" 
form,  and  that,  though  he  thought  that* 
«uch   a  reform   could    not   safely    be 


226  William  Pitt, 

made  while  tlie  passions  excited  by 
the  French  Revolution  were  raging, 
he  never  uttered  a  word  indicating 
that  he  should  not  be  prepared  at  a 
more  convenient  season  to  bring  the 
question  forward  a  fourth  time.  The 
toast  of  Protestant  ascendency  was 
drunk  on  Pitt's  birthday  by  a  set  of 
Pittites,  who  could  not  but  be  aware 
that  Pitt  had  resigned  his  office  be- 
cause he  could  not  carry  Catholic 
emancipation.  The  defenders  of  the 
Test  Act  called  themselves  Pittites, 
though  they  could  not  be  ignorant  that 
Pitt  had  laid  before  George  the  Thii:i 
unanswerable  reasons  for  abolishing 
the  Test  Act.  The  enemies  of  free 
trade  called  themselves  Pittites,  though 
Pitt  was  far  more  deeply  imbued  with 
the  doctrines  of  Adam  Smith  than 
either  Fox  or  Grey.  The  very  negro- 
drivers  invoked  the  name  of  Pitt, 
whose  eloquence  was  never  more  con- 


William  Pitt.  227. 

spicuously  displayed  than  when  he' 
spoke  of  the  wrongs  of  the  negro. 
This  mythical  Pitt,  who  resembles  the 
genuine  Pitt  as  little  as  the  Charle- 
magne of  Ariosto  resembles  the  Char- 
lemagne of  Eginhard,  has  had  his 
day.  History  will  vindicate  the  real 
man  from  calumny  disguised  under 
the  semblance  of  adulation,  and  will 
exhibit  him  as  what  he  was,  a  minister 
of  great  talentSj_honest  intentions,,  and 
liberal  opinions,  pre-eminently  quali- 
fied, intellectually  and  morally,  for  the 
part  of  a  parliamentary  leader^  and 
capable  of  administering  with  pru- 
dence and  moderation  the  government 
of  a  prosperous  and  tranquil  country ; 
but  unequal  to  surprising  and  terrible 
emergencies,  and  liable,  in  such  emer 
gencies,  to  err  gievously,  both  on  the 
side  of  weakness  and  on  the  side  of 
violence. 


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